“Are you really sure this is okay?” Charlie’s voice was carefully controlled, clearly a bit disconcerted with the situation she found herself in after she regained consciousness. She didn’t want to escalate any problems by raising her voice in a way that might cause surprise, though her urgent tone got the message across.
She had partially recovered after draining most of her mana with her ultimate attack, but she was still weakened, sounding groggy in addition to her obvious concern. She and Madison had decided to diagnose the impact of overloading mana as Mana Sickness, though the system hadn’t given it any designation. While only certain skills could push anyone beyond their limit, it seemed like a few specific classes were more susceptible. Perhaps it was due to those classes receiving skills that went beyond what a low level caster could handle.
Camila and Charlie probably wouldn’t be able to continue grinding for a day or two, at least not safely, after Charlie went all out with her abilities. If another emergency situation reared its head, they would be lacking too many of her skills to feel comfortable handling it, so they were putting a pause on the Primal Tracker Slayer quests. Coop was more disappointed that their grind was ending prematurely than they were.
After a pause, Coop answered her question from over his shoulder. “It’s fine. She knows we just wanted to fight the Primal Trackers. It was all a big misunderstanding.” Coop reassured her. He sounded confident to his own ear, but he was keeping a close eye on their new friend, just in case.
“But I don’t understand how we ended up doing all this.” Charlie waved one of her hands with confusion, the other one was tightly gripped on a makeshift saddle horn.
“He just walked up to it and had a little chat.” Camila explained with a chuckle, though she was almost 20 feet away and the sound she made was at least a little more nervous than amused. It was uncharacteristic compared to the image of perfect confidence Camila typically presented.
Coop went ahead and elaborated, waving his loot as he spoke like the pointer stick of a class lecturer. “Well, I tried to explain the whole situation with the assimilation, the Primal Constructs invading, and also with mana and the Eradication Protocol, and I think we both came to an understanding. We have a common enemy and it would be a decent idea to work together and even help each other.” Coop shrugged. “At least that’s what I understood. She isn’t very talkative.” He turned and looked at Charlie, who was sitting on the alligator’s back as they slowly walked down the center of the state road that led back to the city.
She looked absolutely terrified, but she held onto the ridge of scales to prevent herself from falling off. The gait of an alligator was slightly different than most animals used for transportation, with lots of side to side motion to compensate for the stubby legs.
“Okay, that’s crazy, but also why am I on her back?” Charlie nervously asked, trying to get to the root of the matter.
Coop scratched his ear as he started to explain. “I ended up telling her about professions and the extra stats they give. Which then led to inviting her to the civilization shard to see if she wanted to get one. All these animals are so strong, but for the most part they don’t have any interaction with settlements.” Coop continued. “And you’re on her back ‘cause I wanted to keep my hands free, just in case… well, you know.” Coop gestured to the gator with the tooth. The gator seemed to respond by releasing warm air with a heavy breath.
Charlie didn’t seem satisfied with his explanation, so she turned to her most reliable friend instead. “Camila? Why?” She desperately continued, pitch rising to cartoonish levels, not accepting that Camila would have abandoned her the same way.
“I, uh, wanted my hands free, too. You know, for the same reason.” Camila had to raise her voice a bit to be heard as she shifted closer to 25 feet away as she finished.
Charlie choked back more grumbling as she rushed through a few more stages of grief, forced into temporary acceptance by the circumstances.
“It’s fine.” Coop repeated. “She doesn’t mind.” He patted the gator on the side of the neck, though he didn’t receive any feedback from the animal. “At this rate, we should make it back before dark at least.” He guessed, gazing up at the sky. He hadn’t realized how slow alligators were. They seemed pretty fast when they were charging forward or in the water, but those bursts of galloping speed were short-lived. They were walking at a very leisurely pace, but he wasn’t quite willing to hurry them along.
Coop frowned imagining how natural the beast was in the water. “Too bad we can’t take her home with us.” He glanced back over his shoulder and both girls were looking at him like he had lost his mind completely. “I mean she’s an alligator, I don’t think they like salt water that much.” He explained, ignoring what had earned him their stares. “Besides, she already has a home that she obviously worked hard to claim. She had to defeat a Field Boss after all. She has the title.” He pointed out. “I imagine that was a tough fight.” The bus-sized mechanical wolf with its constant howls and a truck-sized alligator would have been a clash of titans. He would have liked to see it, but only if he was far enough away to avoid both of their area skills.
“Really? It has titles?” Charlie asked, unable to see the same information that Presence of Mind revealed for Coop. “So, she’s like Jett?”
“Maybe we’re all like Jett.” Coop mused, but Charlie just looked at him skeptically, unhappy to not get what seemed like a serious answer.
Coop was serious, though, and he tried to explain his reasoning. “Think about it, if they have mana, they probably have those basic skills we all started with: Identify and Common Language. If they’re leveling, they might be able to understand us.” The girls looked at the alligator, which didn’t provide any feedback one way or another.
Coop kept going with his theories. “It’s probably weird to suddenly understand communication like that. Immediately before the assimilation they didn’t even have the conceptual idea of language, right? The whole apocalypse was confusing enough for us humans, and we had it explained, more or less. I imagine they’re confused and doing their best to survive the way they always have.“
“Hm.” Camila thought about it for a moment before reacting. “That unexpectedly makes some sense, I guess.” She admitted, reevaluating the alligator, but not moving any closer. “But, what about all of the Chosen animals? They don’t really seem to behave much differently from before. Shouldn’t there be Champions and, like, animal settlements? They would have received the same faction orientations as us, right?”
“I suppose some of them had it explained to them in a more structured way, like you guys did with the Empire, but not many.” Coop suggested. “Doesn’t it seem like the whole assimilation was weirdly fixated on humans? The Empire didn’t sponsor any animals, right? What percentage of people do you think were offered sponsorships?”
Camila answered. “I heard from one of Gibson’s people that his faction guessed over 90% of people were offered sponsorships. Only those with exceptionally low potential or in extremely isolated places would be ignored, since the name of the game is establishing the settlements and surviving.”
“So, what about all of the animals?” Coop kept up his line of questioning. “There are a lot of them, after all. How many were Chosen?”
Camila looked unsure. “I dunno. Definitely less. Probably less than 1%? It’s rare to even see one leveling at all, and it seems like a coin flip if they were Chosen or not.”
Coop nodded along. “Only a few specialized factions bothered with animals. And now that we know that mana and the system are two separate entities, with the factions essentially flying blind, I think we can explain some of the weirdness in our assimilation compared to what the factions expected. They are almost completely tunnel visioned on humans, applying their own specific experiences to Earth, but the system doesn’t seem to care about the difference between me and our new friend.” He gestured toward the gator. “And mana probably doesn’t care about any of us at all.”
“Is that why Ghost Reef got a civilization shard?” Charlie wondered. “They were supposed to end up in places with high density in order to seed population centers, but one landed on a remote island with two people on it. Maybe the system considered all the animals on the reefs.”
“Could be.” Coop thought it was a reasonable analysis. “If that’s what happened, I imagine a lot of the shards were lost when they landed among a herd of unchosen reindeer or something else that just left it alone. I bet more than half of them would have ended up in the ocean.” Coop frowned as he considered the system’s motivations. “The system doesn’t do a great job uplifting species, does it?”
The rest of the walk was mostly done in quiet contemplation. Coop thought about how Balor described his own species being inducted into the galactic community. By human standards, there was no life on their planet, but the system uplifted unthinking rocks that were minding their own business creating geometric patterns. Of course they would look at the system like it was a god. Coop was willing to bet that the vast majority of the galactic community would have similarly humble origin stories. The system would definitely seem like a force of benevolence from their perspective.
It took the group almost three times as long to complete the return trip back to the airport. The alligator’s pace was consistent, but slow. They moved through the relatively rural outerlimits of the city before finding empty suburbs and half-destroyed strip malls. Eventually, the offices around downtown made their presence known, crowding the sides of the roads with their multi-storey constructions opposite inadequate sidewalks that were being broken down by weeds. Clumps of muhly grasses had grown three to four feet tall already, reclaiming their places within the concrete footprint that had displaced them as cities developed.
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When the airport’s dirt-filled outer fields came into view, it was late into the night. They had only spent a single day away, but Coop considered the trip a success, since the goal was to distract Charlie with his own unhealthy coping mechanisms and give her a chance to get her head straight. It appeared to have worked. She was definitely preoccupied with thoughts of the system, mana, shards, factions, and of course, the giant alligator she was riding.
The airport was busy, despite the late hour. Unlike Ghost Reef, the residents of Empress City had never had any pressure to establish routines. They didn’t sleep or eat, and only those that were pressed into service kept any schedule at all, and it was centered around patrols and guard duties.
Now, there were groups of people, holding torches, as they appeared to be divvying up what was previously the outer ring. It seemed like Marcus and the new leadership of Empress City had already reached the planning phase of development. He thought it would take longer given how much larger the efforts would need to be when compared to Ghost Reef. It didn’t take long for his group’s return to be noticed as evidenced by shouts of alarm.
“Oops.” Coop muttered as he watched the people abandon whatever they were working on to sprint back toward the intact wall of the inner ring.
“I mean, what did you expect to happen?” Camila queried, pointing at the giant alligator like the only people who were behaving to its presence in an appropriate manner were those that were running away.
“Why don’t you go ahead and give them a little warning? Maybe find Marcus and make sure everything is going well.” Coop suggested.
Camila shook her head and went forward. Coop just looked back at the gator and encouraged it to keep going. He didn’t want to make it wait and already knew that it moved slow enough that Camila would have plenty of time to convince Empress City to roll the red carpet out for their guest of honor.
When they approached the nearest gate, Marcus was there to greet them. Him and literally thousands of people. Marcus started in the center of the open gate, but immediately shifted to one side as he witnessed the gator’s form for himself.
Coop had been under the impression that he had already observed the majority of Empress City’s population, but it became abundantly clear that he had not. The fighting had taken place between thousands, but their numbers had been masked by being split multiple times for the different port islands, and then funneled into the highway. When they first claimed the civilization shard, he hadn’t appreciated how many people were simply lingering on the outskirts, or otherwise avoiding the commotion, who had now joined the crowd, seeing a chance for a new beginning.
Coop had only actually seen between 20 and 30 thousand before. The airport now had nearly 80,000 people openly gathered along runways and around the walls, forming long lines, and setting up what were essentially camps as they were brought up to speed.
“I see you made a friend.” Marcus called out, sounding a bit like a parent trying to gauge whether or not their child thought they would be able to keep a stray animal that they brought home.
“Yep,” Coop responded happily, not resisting the childlike joy he had with his new companion. “Wanted to get her a profession.” He clarified as he led the way toward the gate.
“There’s quite a line for the shard, but I don’t think they’ll mind if your friend cuts to the front.” Marcus explained as he fell in on Coop’s side. Specifically, the outside, away from the alligator’s snout.
“So,” Coop started, “How’s it going? Any problems?”
“A few, but much less than expected.” Marcus began. He clearly had a lot to say. “First, the prison has a maximum capacity of 1,000. We’re pretty much already there. Essentially, anyone who had any form of leadership position within the Endless Empire has been incarcerated. It was easy to find them, since just about everyone else pointed them out. None of them tried to hide it, either. If they wanted to resist they would have fled the city before we took over.”
“What are we going to do with them?” Coop was concerned about starting the new direction of the settlement in a way that might taint its future prospects.
“We’ve offered them a choice to either accept exile from the settlement or wait until there is some justice system in place to put them on trial for their crimes. The same deal was given to anyone that participated in the Empire’s campaign. We only had about 20 people take us up on the offer to leave. The rest stayed put.”
“That’s all?” Coop was surprised, given that there were so many people.
Marcus nodded and Coop noticed he had bags under his eyes. It seemed like the Viceroy had been working hard. “I should say that the first thing we established was the situation with the Eradication Protocol, which was Fabiana’s idea. We showed them that there is a greater threat, and that we shouldn’t be fighting each other, but rather establishing strongholds for what is coming in the future. It seems the message of impending doom was received rather brightly.”
Coop nodded. “That’s essentially how I made friends with the gator.” He glanced over and noted how the citizens of Empress City made sure to give the animal a wide berth, though they were pointing and whispering to each other.
He overheard some of their whispered conversations while Marcus paused. “That’s one of Ghost Reef’s Dragonriders!” Someone excitedly announced, referring to Charlie riding on the back of the gator. Coop was immediately confused.
Another seemed to agree. “I heard that’s what happened to the previous Champion. He got eaten in one chomp.” He stated solemnly. “Good riddance.”
“No way! It was the Nomad! He beheaded him after the Champion took one look at the dragons and tried to run away!” A lady disagreed, further fueling the speculation.
Coop didn’t know how they were going to keep anything straight with all the rumors that the place seemed to generate. He looked back up at Charlie, who was petrified by the attention she was receiving. She was doing her best to seem in control of the situation while hiding behind her bangs. In retrospect, he probably should have helped her down before they entered the city.
Marcus continued with his assessment of Empress City. “None of the residents on either side had any long term plans. The very idea of looking forward had essentially been beaten out of them by the conditions established by the top brass. But as a consequence, they were surprisingly agreeable to adopting ours.”
“Are they actually going to be able to cooperate, though?” Coop wondered, skeptical that the resistance and the Empire could go from trying to kill each other to best buddies in a matter of days. It actually seemed completely ridiculous, and he made it clear to Marcus that’s what he thought.
“There’s a chance.” Marcus stated, though he also didn’t sound totally convinced. “For one, the entire assimilation, the apocalypse, mana, and magic, made everything a lot of them were doing seem unreal. I get the impression that even the people physically fighting, felt like they were playing a video game, or doing one of those battle reenactments you might find at a renaissance fair. They just never got their bearings set and were swept up by the factions themselves. Not that it’s an excuse, but at least there are mitigating circumstances that all sides can agree played a major factor. I’m sure you noticed how they were like a stone rolling down a hill.”
“I did, actually. Thought it was some kind of mob mentality.” Coop remembered how he thought he would need to kill them all, then when someone finally surrendered, so many others were willing to do the same, like the tides changed and they were all swept along.
Marcus nodded. “Something like that. Then, the prison actually really came through in terms of enforcement. There is a punishment and discipline scoresheet that the warden can keep; it automatically tracks merits and demerits for residents of the city. All of the Empire’s soldiers, the ones who actually fought, will need to cooperate and essentially work off their crimes. They could just leave, but if there is one thing most everyone is convinced of, it’s that being within settlement territory is critical, and we only piled on by revealing the Eradication Protocol.”
He pointed toward the parking garages that encircled the dungeon tower. “That’s the line for people voluntarily submitting for the program.”
Coop raised his eyebrows as the group of people queued in a line that ran up and down each of the garages, until they spilled out into the pick-up and drop-off area. It included thousands of people. “You’re using the honor system?”
“More or less. I’m a bit nervous about it, but we didn’t have any control over the warden’s scoresheet, or how it would determine what was a merit and a demerit. It’s all a part of the service building, and unfortunately it’s one from the Endless Empire.” Marcus rubbed the back of his neck with one hand as he recalled the rules. “They get merits for proper service toward the settlement and demerits for many detrimental actions, like property or personnel damage. If someone correctly reports someone else, they will receive a merit, and a demerit if they falsely accuse another.” He sighed. “It’s all a bit too invasive, if you ask me, but Fabiana believes it is something that will slowly phase out as the population intermingles. It isn’t like there are ancient feuds that will linger as they work together.”
Marcus put two fingers up. “I can see it going one of two ways. Either the merit system encourages people to work together in building the city, just like Ghost Reef, but in a tangible way, or the demerit system causes a whole new set of issues where no one trusts each other.” He put his fingers down. “Jackson and Fabiana have already instructed all of their captains to keep a close eye on the atmosphere of the settlement as it develops, and Eleza was made aware of our concerns. She promised that it would not become a problem, but I doubt she can accurately assess humans just yet.”
“Huh.” Coop wasn’t sure how he felt about leaving the prison warden in charge of that much, especially now that he believed the contracted residents could be insubordinate in various ways. “It might be good for some of us to at least keep an eye on the process.” He suggested.
Marcus agreed. “That’s why we’re going to establish a unified justice system as soon as possible. It’ll provide some supervision for the whole thing. I really hope this will just be a transitionary period that converts into something we can be proud of.”
“We’ll need to stay involved.” Coop thought it was good that they weren’t too far away.
“The other thing is that we need credits.” Marcus pointed out, at least partially embarrassed.
“I knew it!” Coop laughed. “How much?”
“Well, I suggested we concentrate on establishing the essentials for people to live actual normal lives. People need something to contribute to, ways to better themselves, leisure activities, and rest. So, we created a city-planning department where construction projects will be approved and organized, an adventurer’s guild branch to form hunting parties, outlined a dining district that will be at least partially initiated by contracted residents, and lots and lots of apartments.” Marcus explained. “We only had enough for some of the services that will generate necessary building materials, one restaurant…”
“How much, Marcus?” Coop asked again, amused by how his advisor was dancing around it.
“Housing alone will be close to 1,000,000 basic credits, and that’s if we make sure each room of each apartment unit is filled individually instead of letting them occupy entire units.” Marcus finally admitted.
“Alright.” Coop accepted the damage. “As long as you turn this place into an actual city, as opposed to whatever the heck it was before, that’s not a problem.”