Chapter 137 – Suspicious

Jack and Hannah limped their way to the next battlefield, killing the errant zombie or ghoul while climbing over the wreckage of their own fight. The sound of battle wasn’t as loud as it had been moments before, and Jack was starting to fear for the worst. He needed Kain and his band of tortugas alive to control the sector. If they lost here and now to the Golden Scale, Jack wasn’t sure what the hell he would do. Stick around on the second floor forever and slowly build up an army? Jack grimaced at the possibility.

Luckily, it seemed at least someone was winning their fights today. Jack found the band of tortugas overwhelming the Golden Scale with ease. Apparently, defense wasn’t the only thing turtles were good at. The elite tortuga soldiers rampaged across the battlefield in highly trained cells of three or four, moving like Spartans as they bashed in skulls with their turtle shell shields and pierced through their opponents’ defenses with a well-aimed thrusts of their spears.

Their light gray bodies had glowing technicolor runes painted up and down their arms and legs that seemed to fuel their fighting capabilities. Their weapons and shields all blended together in a collage of color as their technicolor mana spilled out onto their spear tips and covered their shields, taking the form of the many elements that existed. Jack had inquired about that after his initial fight with the tortuga. The technicolor painted mana itself wasn’t very strong. It could take shape and solidify enough to match at least steel. It was also slippery when wet, that was about it.

The real strength of their magic was its versatility. Every color in the mixture represented a different element. Blue for water, orange for fire, yellow for lightning, light gray for wind, brown for earth, so on and so forth. With some careful mana manipulation, they could focus on any particular color within their technicolor palette and their mana would take on that element – albeit a much weaker version of said element.

The real surprise was Kain himself. Jack hadn’t actually fought the tortuga leader in direct combat, only catching glimpses of what his true capabilities might actually be. He towered over the battlefield like a small Godzilla. He donned his turtle shell shield, but spikes shot up from every segment, each radiating a different element. In his right hand was his large paintbrush staff, but the head had taken the shape of a large glaive. He was surrounded, but it looked intentional on his part. Jack watched as the turtle swiped out with his massive glaive, leaving a trail of paint behind his swing that hardened and shot outwards in an arc, cleaving through his opponents.

On the tail end of his swing the glaive turned into a large hammer that he swung overhead, slamming it into the shield of some poor bastard and turning him into a sack of broken bones. He pulled back on his hammer and the paint reformed his weapon once more, turning into a lance. Kain charged forward, turning two adventurers into shish kebabs. All the while, each swing of his weapon was spreading his technicolor paint mana everywhere. As far as Jack could tell Kain was heavily manipulating the spilled paint as well. Large spikes erupted from the puddles of paint, piercing out at anyone unfortunate enough to be nearby. It got so bad that people started ripping off their armor and clothing. Kain was a one-man army, and Jack gave brief thanks he never actually had to fight the monster.

To Jack’s surprise, Kain and his elites weren’t the only ones pulling their weight. There were telltale signs of a little green goblin being a general pain in the ass to the enemy. Nutt acquired a blowgun and was weaving in and out of a group of tortugas shooting out one dart after another into unsuspecting victims. Nutt had a surprising amount of combat sense, only choosing to make an appearance and shoot a dart when the enemy was wholly distracted. The darts didn’t seem deadly by themselves, but it caused enough damage to at least stagger them to varying degrees. That bought the tortugas enough time to lunge in for the killing blow.

“You do realize,” Hannah started “that picking a fight with the Golden Scale and killing all these humans is basically going to make us public enemy number one, right?”

“Technically they started it. I came to negotiate,” Jack countered.

“I’m sure… Still, we should probably put a stop to this and get the hell out of here.”

Jack nodded, scanning the battlefield. “How much mana you got in the tank?”

“Why?”

“See that snake guy?” Jack pointed at Zeth, the one who seemed most in charge of the Golden Scale, at least in this sector. The snake had extended his torso to fifteen feet in length and was whipping around wildly with a deadly momentum. He lashed out with a pair of katars that glowed bright with a dangerous green hue. Five of the tortugas lay dead at his feet.

“Got it.” Hannah pulled out her large crystalline bow once more and began to charge an arrow. Jack watched as her violent flaming mana coalesced on the string of the bow, taking shape into an arrow that grew larger and larger by the second. As she finished charging the shot, the arrow was encased with a prismatic crystal similar to what the bow was made out of. The crystal greatly increased the arrows speed, piercing potential, as well as serving as shrapnel when the shot exploded. Hannah let loose her shot and it flew across the battlefield. She hit the extended Zeth in the middle of his torso, blowing a huge chunk out of him. The tortuga fighting him were surprised for barely a half second before pushing in and stomping on his head.

“Dead,” Hannah confirmed.

“Retreat! Retreat!” came panicked cries all across the battlefield. The Golden Scale pulled out of the fight quickly, almost stumbling over each other to get away from the fight. To Jack’s surprise, the tortuga didn’t give chase at all, which was good because they needed to get the hell out of here before Cumberlin finished off the arbiters.

“Nice fighting,” Jack said as he and Hannah approached.

“You survived,” Kain said, inspecting Jack, “although barely from the looks of it.”

“Yea,” Jack grimaced. “We actually need to get the hell out of here. I didn’t exactly win my fight. More of a tactical retreat situation. You guys seemed to do pretty well though.”

“Hardly,” Kain scoffed. “The Golden Scale is far more vile than I thought. They left their weaklings to contend with us.”

“I was thinking the fight seemed a little lopsided…” Jack started.

“What do you mean left?” Hannah interrupted.

Kain gave her a hard look, not saying anything.

“It’s fine. She’s the one I told you about.” Jack said, waving away any suspicion. Kain nodded in response and continued on.

“It was strange. As soon as the fighting broke out, a large band of their reinforcements simply abandoned the fight. Outside of their snake leader, it was wholesale slaughter for us.”

Hannah furrowed her brows at this news, staring at the ground in deep thought.

“Any ideas?” Jack asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I joined up with them only very briefly. That’s why I’m here. Thought I could use them to find you.”

“Worked pretty well.”

“It did,” she agreed. “They had just met up with reinforcements from deeper in the city who all seemed pretty strong. From what I could gather they had been following your troops. They cornered them here. Then you showed up and the assassins attacked. It’s strange. I’m honestly not sure why they would just leave like that. Is anyone still alive we can question?”

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Hannah turned back to the battlefield to check. The only thing left alive was Nutt. Who was stealing as much as he could from the dead bodies.

“Is he with you?” Hannah asked Kain.

“No. The feral one belongs to Jack.”

Hannah gave Jack a confused stare.

“What? He’s helpful. Sort of,” Jack said, walking over to Nutt. Hannah followed closely behind; her eyes filled with skepticism.

“Nutt, you should probably ask before you start looting,” Jack said, shoving the goblin slightly with his foot.

“If I ask, they’ll just say no,” he replied, pulling rings off one of the dead adventurers’ fingers. “I earned this!”

“Uh huh. I saw your little blow gun. When did you learn how to use that?”

“I ran out of potions to throw,” Nutt shrugged, turning to look at Jack. His eyes went wide at the sight of Hannah. “So pretty…” he muttered.

Jack watched with a grin as Nutt’s train of thought left the station. He glanced over at Hannah who seemed appropriately disgusted.

“He reminds me of a furby… You remember those things? Cute at first but after three days you want to smash it to pieces with a bat,” Hannah said.

“Huh. I was struggling to figure out what he reminded me of, but I think you nailed it,” Jack agreed.

“You think I’m cute?” Nutt said, picking up on all the wrong parts of the conversation.

Hannah rolled her eyes at the goblin and stalked off back towards Kain. Nutt trailed after her like a puppy.

She’s going to kill him, Jack thought to himself.

With little else to do the group quickly scavenged what they could from the battlefield and began to make their way back to the tortuga homebase. The tortuga elite had a nonsensical amount of AP and came back with enough supplies to last at least a year. They really did intend on posting up in the sector until they got enough beast hearts to upgrade everyone in their army. They were far less accepting of Jack’s leadership, insisting that they abandon their post and return to outside the city gates so they could hunt the beast themselves.

“You guys can charge a beast heart to get inside again,” Jack offered, earning him a surprised look from Kain. “What? I only made the entry fee free to get Hannah inside faster. I don’t care what you charge. In fact, the less people in the city the better.”

“This have to do with the faction you’re in charge of? You better hope there’s a way to change that name by the way,” Hannah glared at him.

“You would really do this?” Kain asked. Jack stared at the tortuga for a second, debating his options. He needed these guys to stick around. It sounded like they were already talking about mutiny and he needed to put a stop to that fast. Buying them off seemed like the best option for now.

“Yea,” Jack offered. “Me and Hannah will go over it, but I think I’ll probably leave you in charge of this sector while I go out and claim the others.”

“What? No Jack. We should clear this floor as fast as possible. I already heard about the secret quest. It’s a logistical nightmare.”

“Yea. It’s going to suck for you to figure out,” Jack agreed.

“What? I said no. We aren’t doing it.”

“Afraid we have to. Certain asshole gods are going to make our lives hell if we don’t pull it off.”

“Our lives?” Hannah stopped dead in her tracks, “Or your life?”

“Ours,” Jack sighed. “You saw the assassins. They're making good on their threat to kill me for failing to kill Gideon.”

“And this involves me how?”

“Guilty by association?” Jack shrugged. “Basically, the only way he’s calling off the hit on me and all my friends is if we clear the secret quest. Don’t tell me you’re going to leave your best friend hangin?”

Hannah just glared at him in response. He honestly did feel a little bad about dragging her into all this, but she was the only one he could trust to actually help him out.

“Tell me about the summer elves,” she squinted, still not moving from her spot.

“That’s not his fault,” Nutt piped up. “That lady was crazy.”

“Not doing yourself any favors,” she glared at the little goblin.

“We are very disappointed in you.” Nutt turned on Jack in a heartbeat, crossing his arms and scowling at him. He kept glancing back at Hannah hoping to earn her approval. Jack squinted at the goblin, wondering how far he could punt the little fucker.

“It was a bit of a misplay on my part,” Jack offered. That only served to make Hannah angrier.

“They put out a bounty on your head. They want you alive. Seriously, what did you do to them? Did you steal something from them?”

“Stole something back is more like it,” Jack grumbled.

“Are they strong?”

“Outside of Cumberlin, their leader is probably the strongest person on the floor at the moment. Although I honestly don’t know. It seems every fight I get into so far just seems twice as hard as the last one. No telling what waits for us deeper inside the city.”

“You could just stop picking fights with everyone,” Hannah mumbled under her breath. “Tell me, why the hell did you follow me up here anyways? What about the plan?”

Jack stared at Hannah with a blank expression painted across his face.

“If you say what plan, I’m going to shoot you,” she squinted.

Jack honestly had no idea what plan she was talking about, but that didn’t matter much because he could just tell her the truth.

“Christopher told me to follow you up here,” Jack offered. That was the wrong play, because Hannah punched him in the face.

“Fucking ow,” he complained.

“Shutup,” she growled. “Are you trying to ruin my relationship or something? Why the hell are you blaming this on him?”

“It’s true!” Jack protested. “There I was minding my own business and he busted into the bar saying you got caught up in an ambush and had to leave. He told me to go after you. Said it was too dangerous for me to stick around.”

“He said it was too dangerous? For you?” She narrowed her eyes at Jack in clear disbelief. “There’s no way he would forget the plan… So why would he tell you to leave? You were just supposed to lay low and wait, Jack. That was the plan. Remember? A plan so simple there’s no way any of us could possibly forget it.”

That’s right. In the event either one of us gets separated while climbing the Tower, just sit and wait for the other person to come back down and fetch us. Now I remember, Jack thought. Then he narrowed his eyes. There really was no way that her brainiac boyfriend could have forgotten that.

“He said you got ambushed. What exactly happened?” Jack suddenly asked.

“Just that,” Hannah shrugged. “It was a bit surprising. I’m not sure how they found me to be honest. My only real options were to kill my way out of there or just advance to the next floor.”

“Kain, is there a waypoint anywhere nearby?” Jack asked.

“Third sector and second sector,” Kain offered “you can also open up one here if you get enough City Points.

“I think your boytoy is up to no good. You should go back and figure out what the hell he’s up to.”

Hannah didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then she frowned at Jack.

“I’m supposed to just leave you behind to handle things? You’ve already got half the floor after your head. If I leave now you’ll start the next world war.”

“I’m not saying you need to go back indefinitely. Figure out what the hell Christopher’s up to down there and why he wanted us off the first floor. If he checks out, drag his ass up here. We could use him. This city is like a wet dream for diplomats.”

Hannah spent a lot of the walk back in deep thought. Nutt on the other hand wouldn’t shut up, begging Hannah not to abandon him. Soon, their group made it back to the graveyard and were almost within safety of the dome. Unfortunately, the dome was under assault by a large group of adventurers.

“Those Golden Scale cowards,” Kain growled as he readied himself for another attack.

“Those the soldiers who ditched the fight from earlier?” Jack asked.

“Looks like they used the fight as a distraction to come kill off your army. Can they get inside that thing?” Hannah asked.

A loud explosion that shook the earth rang out, answering her question.

The tortuga’s immediately charged forward. Jack pulled out his daggers with a sigh. He was in no shape to battle another group of elites. This day just keeps getting worse and worse, he grumbled.