“About what?” I asked.

Angelica shook her head, “Something is eating at you.”

“Snow lions mostly,” I quipped. I wasn’t bitter. To the snow lions, I must be delicious.

Angelica stared at me flatly.

“I hit the limit on experience gains for the snow lions. So, this dungeon is no longer earning me anything beyond skill progression and loot. Also, Brand is bugging the hell out of me. I think he is using some sort of antagonizing skill or something.” I admitted reluctantly.

Angelica shook her head again, “You and the grinding. Brand isn’t using any skills on you. You’re just taking offense to him because he hurt your feelings.”

I raised an eyebrow, “You know this… how?”

“I grew up inland of the Fantasy Coast. I have dealt with people using Persuasive skills and powerful mind effects. Brand was not using either.” She explained matter-of-factly.“Think about it. Did you have any prompt saying you failed to resist any checks? Like Goad, Taunt, Wheedle, Snipe... did any of the checks say you succeeded in resisting any skills?”

“…No,” I said, realizing she was right about this.

“That means the stress is coming from you, Doug. The signal is coming from inside.” Angelica said without judgment. She walked to the fridge, and took out one of the sad sandwiches. “I get it, Brand isn’t my favorite person either.”

“Didn’t you almost spear him?” I asked.

Angelica paused, considering, “…yeah, and that is not a proud moment.” She shrugged. “I’ve dealt with it.” She looked at me for another long moment. “What’s the other issue?”

“Am I really that easy to read?”

Angelica nodded emphatically, killing all notions that I had hid my feelings well.

I sighed, “I am trying to find someone. Someone I think of as a daughter. We were separated for a long time. I… I am trying to find her, but I have no leads to follow. I am also terrified that if I do find her, she could already be dead.” I didn’t want to say the next part, but I think I needed to hear it out loud. “…an even more cowardly part of me is scared that I will find her alive, but she’ll no longer see me as her father or want me in her life. This keeps causing a sort of spiral. I haven’t been able to stop it.”

Willpower check… Successful.

Emotional state kept under control.

Note: Repeated rolls will increase difficulty.

Angelica sat down next to me, punching me lightly on the shoulder. “That sucks.” After a moment she added, “Celeste says she’s sorry.”

“Thanks,” I managed.

We had eight hours of waiting for Brand to rest. The plan then was to have Angelica and I rest. I spent a few hours trying to find the prompt that mentioned a retcon with no success. It was completely gone.

I then spent more time trying to spot any changes in the prompts I still had logged. That became a make-work endeavor. I hadn’t paid the closest attention to them before.

The dull buzz of the phantom pain from injuries already healed was fading as time passed. My rough guess is it would disappear in another couple of hours. Ideally, I could just sleep through the worst of it, but I couldn’t sleep, Exhausted condition be damned.

To kill time, I decided to look at the skills the new gear gave me.

Blend In

This is the subtle skill of avoiding visual detection. Those that master this skill can modulate their movements and adjust their profile so others’ eyes slide past them. Note: This skill does not remove physical presence or sound.

Move Silently

This is the subtle skill of moving without creating noise. Mastery of this skill allows the user to dampen all noise created from movement. Note: This skill does not remove physical presence or visual form.

Ambush

This is the subtle skill of beating the hell out of people who don’t expect it. The only thing better than punching out an opponent is sucker-punching the arrogant bastard. Any successful melee attack while undetected will inflict a damage multiplier. Damage starts at 2x and will increase with skill mastery.

Okay, that seemed like a serious combination of abilities. Now, most of you would probably ask yourselves ‘If you were capable of using these skills, would you try and murder things in cold blood?’ I could absolutely do that to snow lions. I despised them deeply. I loathed them like I had been mauled by them constantly, my entire life. I hated them more than George Lucas hated Star Wars.

The moment I got excited about wanton lion murder, I also realized this was not actually that helpful in my current situation. I was the tank. Enemies that could not see me would go and attack others in the group. For the immediate future, I was front and center, for better or for worse.

I tried using Move Silently. It would ping a note of success every time I moved. It rendered the squealing of the springs all but silent to my ears. That didn’t really make sense, but I wasn’t going to complain. This did explain why the damned cats were able to constantly sneak up and bite me.

Finally, I got up and started trying to Blend In. It was hard to really say what was happening since Brand had his back to me, I wasn’t really causing the skill to trigger.

Blend In check… Failed

My heart jumped into my throat. I spun to find Celeste watching me with a smile on her face. She mouthed the word, “Nerd” and stuck her tongue out at me. She glanced over to Brand, who was awake and performing some sort of maintenance on his guns. She shrugged and went back to sleep.

I snuck back into bed, but the Failure prompt kept popping up every time I tried to use it. After about an hour, I gave up trying to develop the skill. I got out of bed quietly, but walked over to Brand’s table without making any effort to hide.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“Trouble sleeping?” Brand asked. He had completely disassembled his handguns. The pieces were all laid out on a cloth. He picked up one piece and applied a few drops of lubricant and then proceeded to smoothly install it into another piece, the firearm rapidly coming together.

“I just can’t fall asleep,” I admitted, trying to be honest rather than abrasive..

Brand set the partial gun down and looked up at me, “Are you having issues with stress or anxiety?”

I could tell he was going to use some sort of scrutinizing skill on my answer. “Not like you think. Tanking isn’t going to break me any time soon. I just have a lot on my mind.”

“Unless it directly relates to surviving this dungeon, you need to push it into some corner of your mind and just forget it until we get out of here.” Brand went back to assembling his pistol.

I thought about what Angelica said. Had Brand hurt my feelings?

Self-Reflection check… Successful!

Yep. Having him talk down to me, seeing the results of the Analyze skill. Knowing that he thought me inferior, and seeing Angelica almost fawn over him… it all upset me. It biased me to see every future action in a hostile light. This caused me to fall into a sort of outrage feedback loop. Basically, winding myself up.

Wait, why the hell did Angelica showing interest in another man bug me? I blocked the skill roll before it could bring up a prompt. I needed to puzzle that out myself. Brand had a point also. That was a once-we-get-out-of-the-dungeon train of thought.

I took a deep breath, “I am sorry I have been …confrontational with you.”

Brand didn’t look up from his work, “No harm done, sir. I was rather standoffish at our first meeting. I am less than proud of how I acted meeting the both of you.” He completed assembling the first gun and it vanished into his inventory. “If you are willing, I recommend we simply start again with a clean slate.”

“I would like that,” I said. “Can I ask you something?”

“Certainly,” Brand said, beginning to assemble the second gun.

“What are you after here in the dungeon?” I asked.

Brand didn’t answer for a long moment, “I am after the Heart of the Dungeon Boss. As a Dungeon Boss, its body will be made of McGuffins. The Heart will allow a quest to be completed once I bring it home. If I am unsuccessful, I fear for the Eternal Kingdom and all its people. The Steam Meister’s automatons will not show mercy, nor will Countess Dracul and her minions.” He looked up from his work, the gun assembled. After loading it he asked, “You are not affiliated with those groups, are you?”

“Those names mean nothing to me,” I said, meeting his gaze and ignoring the gun.

“You have not heard of them?” Brand asked, like I just told him I never heard of the sky.

“I’ve spent my entire life in the Wastes,” I said, watching him watch me.

Again, Brand studied me. His eyes glazed momentarily as he read more prompts.

Perception check …Successful

He was working to hide both confusion and some fear. The confusion was from the fact that his reading of the prompts told him: I was telling the truth. A truth that could not be. It would be like if someone had claimed to my previous self to not know about Europe. Like, physically never heard of it ever, in any context. Technically possible, but extremely unlikely.

The fear came from the nagging idea that his prompts were incorrect. Which, to my limited understanding, could only happen in a few ways. Perhaps I was a master of Deception. This was probably unlikely, though playing the fool would be one of the best forms of deception since it used some truth. The other option was something else affecting the dice rolls. Which was never good.

Huh, Perception is nuts.

We sort of shrugged at each other. There was no way around the fact that both of us were still stuck in the dungeon and had to work together. Sure, we were both keeping secrets from each other, but I doubted either of us honestly cared about what the other was doing once we went our separate ways. So regardless of who we were, we were aligned in trying to get out of this dungeon.

It was time to change the subject, “Do you know anything about stealth skills?”

Brand eyed me, looking almost offended at the question. “I know a thing or two. Do you have some specific inquiry?”

“A piece of gear I got from the White Shadows; it grants access to skills like Blend In.” I started. After Brand nodded, I continued, “I tried using the skills, but Blend In is constantly failing, even when no one is watching.

“That’s nothing to worry about,” Brand said. He briefly flashed a friendly smile, “The skill cannot work without someone watching. You can’t hide if there is no one to hide from.” He paused for a moment as he finished assembling the second handgun, “You should get some rest, you are clearly exhausted. Tomorrow is likely going to be…taxing.” He slid the gun into a holster in his coat.

Perception check …Successful

I didn’t need to see the prompt to pick up on it. Brand’s warning was pretty blatant.The chummy smile was what clued me in before the prompt flashed.If I was failing a stealth skill, I was being observed. When he saw I understood, he gave me the slightest of nods. That put his and Angelica’s unease outside the Mini-Boss’s room in a vastly different light. Something very well hidden was in here with us.

Not wanting to draw attention to this, I rose from the table and went back to my bed.

I tried to sleep but the prompt would not appear.

Fuck it!

Self Reflection check… Successful.

Oh! I was struggling to process the idea of nearly dying. I felt the phantom pain of the fangs closing around my neck. My breath caught like I was trying to breathe blood. Thinking back on the fight with the White Shadows, I now had the feeling of claws splintering my ribs.

Before …spawning… I was not a warrior. I’d been in a few fights in my youth, a long time ago, but not the life-and-death kind. In my old life, losing a fight meant eating dirt. Life-and-death combat was new. This kill-or-be-killed situation while having beings like Wilson, the other spawn, and Adora yanking my chain was leading me into a dark place. I felt powerless. I hated that feeling.

Treat this like everything else, I thought to myself. Define goals.

The goal was to find Kate. In order to do that I needed to get out of the dungeon.

In order to do that I needed to not die.

In order to do that I needed to grow stronger.

The trouble with that was I was no longer gaining experience from killing Snow Lions. Strangely, despite the fact they had mauled me ad nauseam, now that I got nothing from killing them I lost all enthusiasm to bash their heads in. the idea of stomping the life out of them, just sounded like work. I could try setting them on fire, but that was probably more setup than execution. I wouldn’t say no to a Saw-like Rube Golberg lion grating device, if one was available. Okay I was going to keep killing them, but I needed to find some other means of improving my chances. I wasn’t invincible. Sure, I could beat any mook down in one hit, but the fights with the Wendigo and the White Shadows clearly demonstrated I needed to figure something out for the heavy hitters. Why could I block attacks from the Wendigo but couldn’t block attacks from the White Shadows?

After a moment’s thought, I realized I just didn’t understand how anything actually worked. …wait a minute! I am a nerd…was a nerd… am based on a nerd! Let’s go with that. What’s more, I am based on a nerd who loved figuring out systems and finding ways to optimize characters within them. It was weird. I could remember, clear as day, paging through multiple RPG core books and finding exploits with the system. I understood that the person I had loved tinkering with game systems. I also was now in a system where my ability to maximize my attributes and skills would increase my ability to survive.

Why was I apathetic to this system? That didn’t gel logically, but digging into the system felt like a chore.

I was not the Titan. I was Doug. The Titan used to love these games and systems. I couldn’t give less of a damn. That said, if I was going to survive, if I was going to help Angelica and Celeste, if I was going to find Kate, I needed to learn.

I stood and walked into the bathroom.

I looked into the mirror, “Wilson, I need to talk to you.”