030 - CHAOS IS THE VOICE OF PROGRESS

Conrad had never been arrested before. He’d never even thought through what he might do if it ever happened, but in the moment when the guards began to close in on him and Barrett demanded that he remove any weapons from his inventory, his mind worked with the kind of intensity that only desperation can generate. And through the haze of fear, anxiety, and the desperate desire to get out, it offered him a single, possible solution.

He tapped the guild pin, still nestled securely against his chest, just underneath his armor.

Activate Emergency SOS?

A guild quest will be generated for your safe return or, in the case of your demise, the return of proof of death. As a gold tier member of the Adventurer’s Guild, 100 Guild Points will be added as an incentive for quest completion along with any additional rewards you have coordinated with the Edge chapter of the Adventurer’s Guild.

Additional Reward Added: [You have not added an additional reward]

Activate?

[Yes / No]

Moron! There had been time to set up at least some kind of reward and he hadn’t even bothered. He really hoped that friendship would be reward enough for Troy and Mara to pick up the quest because he still wasn’t sure what 100 Guild Points could even buy.

But if they bailed him out of this mess he’d be happy to negotiate just about any kind of reward.

He selected [Yes] and the prompt was replaced by another, more final message.

Quest Issued

Good luck!

He vanished the pin into his inventory as the guards began taking away his weapons and armor.

“Your inventory will be checked for any weapons or gear we don’t approve of using in the Arena,” Barrett said, “And it’ll be painful for you if we have to extract anything against your will, so best to get it out now. We like to leave people with whatever we can - makes the dungeon happier if you’re not able to pay your debt with gold.”

“You mean if it kills me,” Conrad said as he put his old armor, the iron banded club, Mara’s dagger, and his steel mace on the ground to be snatched up by the guards.

“Yes,” Barret said, “but I prefer the way I put it.”

Mitch, the guard, held up the dagger and club for Barrett to see. He nodded and Mitch, bizarrely, handed them back to Conrad.

“Inventory these,” he said, “You’ll need ‘em later.”

They took his armor, shield and mace, and when it was all done with Mitch took out a pair of manacles and clipped them tight around Conrad’s wrists. Their function became apparent immediately as the option to open his inventory or use any of his abilities grayed out - useless to him while he was in custody.

“You’ll be taken to the holding cells while you wait your turn to enter the Arena. Some others are scheduled before you and we like to keep things as orderly as possible in Great Pines,” Barrett said and signaled for Mitch to take him away, “You’ll be formally sentenced in public tomorrow. Nobody will ever be allowed to say the law in Great Pines railroaded an innocent man.”

Conrad couldn’t believe Barrett was saying that with a straight face, even in Edge there were provisions for self defense. But there it was. Whatever his feelings on the matter, Barrett meant what he said.

A shove to the back from Mitch and Conrad was sent walking out the door onto the platform that fronted Barrett’s suite. Again Conrad saw the Arena, but its sandy fighting pit no longer looked to be a locus for opportunity, but rather a gallows on which he would soon have a noose wrapped around his neck.

The journey from Edge would take the better part of a day, maybe even longer, and that assumed that Troy, Mara, or some other adventurer or band even saw and accepted the SOS quest. It was a good thing that he triggered it, a backup, but he had gotten himself into this mess and he couldn’t afford to just sit around hoping somebody else bailed him out.

As Mitch marched him down the spiraling staircase around the circumference of the great pine tree, he took the time to go over his mistakes in the past couple of days.

To begin with, he had insisted on taking the mercenary quests that existed rather than following his parents wishes and simply putting up a new one for somebody else to handle. Then he had ignored both Troy and Mara’s advice to avoid taking mercenary quests altogether. Setting all of that aside, rushing out to handle it on his own as a solo had been foolhardy.

Maybe he could have gotten Troy and Mara to investigate with him, to poke around. Getting them invested in the quest might have been what was needed to bring them along - but wouldn’t he just have gotten them into the same trouble he was in now?

He shook his head. There was no point in considering how things might have gone down if he could somehow magically change his past choices. None of that was possible, so what had he screwed up then that, fixing it now, might improve his situation?

Shackled as he was, he realized this situation wasn't’ so much different from signing the contract with the Seekers. He had been stuck, yes, forced to comply with orders and circumstances outside his choosing. But he had found ways, small notches in his situation into which he could slip his fingers and begin to pry, to assert some kind of control over his situation even though he was a pawn in somebody else’s game.

Looking out over the growing town it suddenly occurred to him. The shock at discovering the node. The existence of the Arena and even the town of Great Pines. The story from Karno. All of it had been bread crumbs that he had lapped up and followed to get here. All of it was still a mystery to him and it didn’t have to be.

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Outside of all of his - now obvious - other mistakes, the one that he could actually act on was to get better information about his situation. And that would mean making a new friend.

He attempted to affect a light hearted tone and was at least partially convincing to himself as he said to Mitch,“Bet you can see your house from here.”

“That one over there, actually,” Mitch said pointing to an adjacent great pine with several dwellings carved into the side almost as high as Barrett’s, then with pride added, “Bet you can’t get a place that nice out in Edge.”

“Maybe not, but the city has a lot more to offer than this dump,” Conrad said, careful not to layer on the disdain too thick. He wanted to elicit conversation, not a beating. “Can’t even get a decent meal out here I bet. Nothing like The Down.”

“Nothing like…” Mitch said, incredulous, “I almost hope you survive the Arena, just so you can see how wrong you are. See that there?”

He pointed to a structure with a warm glow coming from the windows, several small chimneys evidencing what was likely a fairly robust kitchen.

“What, place with all the scrap metal outside?” he indicated with his shackled hands a building he knew wasn’t at all the intended target.

“No no, that’s the smithy, further to the right down the road, past the Wood Crafter’s hut with all the furniture out front, that’s Maghda’s Eatery. Meat pies with spices the likes of which you can’t even dream of in a place like Edge. She grows em special here.”

In this way, Conrad nudged more and more information out of Mitch about the various shops and dwellings around Great Pines. As a trader or Merchant, he would use this information to discover the shape of the economy of a place and learn what sorts of items were most in demand. Part of him even wanted to set up an eventual trade route as it seemed that there was a serious gap in the types of shops and items that adventurers would find most attractive.

As a prisoner though, he wasn’t sure what he could do with the information, but if Mitch was giving it away for free then Conrad would take all he had. Somewhere in it all could be the key to his escape.

Pride was the next emotional chord he could pluck. Sure he might look down his nose at the meager services available in Great Pines, or so Mitch would think, but he could reasonably be impressed by the actual growth of the town.

“I’ll admit there’s a lot more going on here than I expected, and it does get me curious - how is it possible that so much has been built so quickly?” Conrad asked, putting as much curiosity and awe into his voice as he could without overdoing it.

“Noticed that, did you?” Mitch tapped his head and winked at Conrad, “It’s the dungeon.”

“You don’t mean…” Conrad said, suddenly looking around, “Are we in it now?”

Laughing, Mitch shook his head, “No, nothing like that. But it seems to know what we need out here, and it knows that getting what we need means it gets what it needs. So it often gives us Growth Stones.”

“Is that what’s got you growing so big and tall?” Conrad joked, “Never heard of them.”

“Ha! Neither had I. Not for people though. They create buildings, infrastructure, walls. Sometimes they spawn whole buildings over the course of a few hours, other times they just create plans and spawn the materials for us to put them together. The dungeon has even spawned non-combat class tomes for builders and artisans,” Mitch said.

“Incredible.” Conrad didn’t know what else to say. It was. He began to think that perhaps Barrett’s timeline of twenty years was far, far too long. If what Mitch said was true, and once word got out, Great Pines would be a thriving metropolis inside of a decade.

They moved through the not-yet-streets of Great Pines and Conrad added land marks to his mental map as Mitch threaded their way toward the Arena.

“What about Karno? Is he around here enjoying lavish rewards for bringing me in?” Conrad had to work hard to keep the bitterness out of his tone and affect an air of casual curiosity. The fact that he had begun, reluctantly, to see the man as a friend made the deception that had brought him here - and not just to Great Pines but here, shackled and being marched off to die - hurt a lot more than he would ever admit so somebody like Mitch.

“You mean ‘ThE ToWeR’?” Mitch teased “He’s around. I swear, you’ll never catch me walking around with a goofy name like that, I don’t care if the best adventurer’s have ‘em or not.”

“How did he get it anyway?” Conrad asked, “Other than the obvious.”

“Folks ‘round here, of course. They love Karno. He’s sort of a hero, always coming back laden with more gear and goods than any of the other crews - the gentleman bandit! Though a lot of the people think he’s a deadly terror,” Mitch said laughing, “Gentle giant more like.”

So they didn’t know about his new combat skills. That was something else Conrad added to his mental dossier. Layout of the town - check. Knowledge of various non-combat class holders - check. Karno’s new fighting abilities - check. New friend Mitch? He’d give that a “work in progress” tag.

And then it was looming in front of him. From the height of the great pine it hadn’t seemed like much, but up close and knowing it was his final destination somehow made the stone and wood work of the modest circular building more imposing than it had been before. Walkways and covered boxes of great pine planks sat atop stone masonry in an architecture that at once felt human but at the same time, somehow altogether more savage.

As they approached the noise of a crowd of people shouting in collective excitement drifted over the wind.

“Ohh!” Mitch said, “Guess I might be in time for one of the fights tonight!”

Then the strangest thing happened. Over the noise of the crowd, clear as if it were coming from just beside Conrad, a voice rose above the growing din.

“NICE EVASION THERE BY THE CHALLENGER, STILL JUST BARELY HOLDING ON!”

The voice was male, jovial, excited, and yet so loud Conrad figured whoever it belonged to had to be using a skill or special device to enhance it.

“NOTICE THE OPEN MOUTH BREATHING! HE’S EXHAUSTED. WITHOUT A MIRACLE IT’S GOING TO BE ANOTHER HEAD CLAIMED BY THE CHIEFTAIN!”

“Tough opponent, the Chieftain,” Mitch remarked, listening to the fight commentary while dragging Conrad forward to a smaller entrance set down some stairs off the main road.

“Who is that?” Conrad asked.

Mitch started in excitedly, “He’s a big brute, green skinned and usually carries a-”

“No no, the voice. Who is the voice?” Conrad asked.

“Oh, him,” Mitch smiled sardonically, “We just call him The Announcer.”

“Lotta people around here getting nicknames, you sure you don’t want one?” Conrad quipped, “One of the recruits out of the Chaos Lands then?”

He’d never heard of any sort of skill or class that might be specialized to commentating on Arena fights though. Even more strange was that they had found such a person all the way out here.

Mitch shook his head, “Not a recruit. Not even human.”

“What do you mean he’s not human?”

“I mean,” Mitch looked him in the eye and smiled grimly, “he’s the dungeon.”

“The dungeon… talks?”

Mitch pulled a large key from his inventory and slotted it into a thick looking, iron banded door. He swung it open and pushed Conrad through before him.

“That’s what I said,” he replied.

Conrad added it to the list. And like that, the true meaning behind everything that Barrett did became clear.

If the dungeon could talk, perhaps it could reason. And if it could reason, then it could be bargained with.

And a dungeon that could be kept ignorant, given only choice pieces of information and never given an equal seat at the table? That incredible source of power could be not just cultivated and grown, but controlled.

For the first time since having the shackles put on, Conrad felt a tiny spark of hope ignite in him as he asked, “When do I get to meet him?”

“IT’S ALL OVER!,” The announcer bellowed as the crowd collectively ‘ooo’d in commiseration to seeing something that had to hurt.

“THE CHIEFTAIN, CHAMPION OF THE FOURTH LEVEL OF THE CONQUEST, TAKES HOME ANOTHER WIN!”

“Oh, he’ll be around,” Mitch said, “Likes to learn about the newcomers.”