QuestWright Bk2 C58: The Operational QuestWright (III) (Patreon)

Another Author Note:

I have a mentee whose story just came out. It's called Play Scared, and it's a LitRPG Horror. The dude (Shawn) is a hell of a writer, and I hope you'll check it out, as not only does it have terrifying moments, but it's absolutely hilarious.

Cover:

Link: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/159145/play-scared-a-litrpg-horrorcomedy-female-lead

Blurb: As soon as Nora decided to rejoin the world, the apocalypse began. Typical.

Sitting at a cafe, Nora Price is catching up with a close friend she'd ghosted for far too long, when a demonic invasion tears the city of Chicago apart.

Nora wakes up in The Grindhouse, a sadistic game designed to harvest human fear hosted by an imp in a powder-blue tuxedo. In Zone 1, a suburban slasher nightmare where masked killers roam the streets, Nora plays recklessly. But to protect her allies, a self-aware NPC and her best friend (now a killer doll), Nora has to do the one thing she's avoided for years: actually try.

Survive all thirteen Zones, each themed after a different horror genre, and she drags the demon in charge back to his hellscape of a dimension and frees Earth. Fail, and humanity stays his fear farm until there's nothing left to feed on.

Welcome to the Grindhouse, where your fear is food, and the gamemaster is very hungry.

Chapter 58: The Operational QuestWright (III)

After he’d given out enough Quests to exhaust himself, Cass lay down on his too-big bed and considered all of the changes that had come to his life recently.

Bella now had a Calling. Survivor had been upgraded. He’d even had an argument with a metaphysical voice for more power. And what’s more, he’d won. 

Everything in his life since reaching Liberty had been moving from one rush to another. The Quill, Anchors, Profile, now the Dungeons, and the corruption below. He still had several thousand experience, banked before Bella had gotten her Calling, and he had yet to do anything with it. 

It’s like his life was being torn into pieces, and each piece took on more stress until it was squeezed down no bigger than a fingernail under the pressure.

That needed to stop. So he resolved himself before going to sleep. He would master his abilities before taking on any more. He would become a real Journeyman QuestWright, not just a poster child of advancement. For all that Martin and Randolph were creepy, they had been right. His rise had been nothing but meteoric.

It was time to settle back and work on what he already had. 

After he finished the Resolution Path, that is. It was mostly made up of small-time abilities that enhanced what he already had, rather than giving him something new to manage. 

The path came into view in all its yellow magnificence. It wouldn’t hurt to dip a toe, and he did have the extra experience waiting for him.

Absolute Integrity gave him a reputational floor that would protect him if he ever ran into cascading failures again. Quest Salvage allowed him to selectively recover experience and reputation from failing Quests, while Failure Protection gave him a 10 reputation buffer per day. 

It was interesting to note that there was no specific mention of Quests in Failure Protection. It just protected Reputation. 

How did I miss that? Cass shook his head. That’s what happens when you get bogged down in too many ‘need to do’s and don’t focus on what actually needs doing.

With the exception of Quest Salvage, none of them needed any extra work. They just built on what he already had.

Dispute Resolution was something he wasn’t too sure of. Its description implied that if a Questor failed, but it wasn’t their fault, then the results would be decided by Cass. That wasn’t much to go on.

I’ll just have to unlock it and see what happens.

Resolution’s nodes, both Major and Minor, lit up as he selected each and every one of them. The total cost came out to over three thousand experience, a hefty amount that almost made him reconsider his choice. But when all of the nodes stared back at him, Cass bit his lip and confirmed.

4 major nodes unlocked: Absolute Integrity, Quest Salvage, Failure Protection, Dispute Resolution.

16 Minor nodes unlocked: Shielding Capacity, Penalty Buffering, Integrity Anchor, Expedited Salvage…

Like it had with Logistics, all of the Minor nodes provided small bonuses to the Majors. Failure Protection, in particular, moved from saving ten reputation a day to twenty. It was such a nice bump that when the next notification came along, he knew what to do.

Failure Protection worked on all Reputation. That meant he’d stop losing reputation up to a certain limit, even when working with the Quill. And for that, it was worth the upgrade.

[SYSTEM NOTICE]

As you have unlocked all Minor nodes that form a connection with a Major, you now have the option to sacrifice their bonuses for empowerment.

Would you like to do this now?

Cass confirmed and put in his selection.

Failure Protection has been upgraded to Reputational Reserve

Reputational Reserve:

Passive ability: Each day, the QuestWright gains a daily baseline protection of 40 System Reputation per day. Any unused protection is automatically banked for the future.

That’ll help more than a little going forward. Now, I won’t be burning through all of my reputation every time I make something with the Quill.

All the nodes touched down with a Click as they settled into place, their yellow coloring turning silver. Oddly, no new Path formed from Resolution. It just stopped.

So not all of my original Paths can upgrade. Good to know. I wonder why Logistics upgraded, but this one didn’t. 

It was just another question that he would likely find answers for long down the road of his Calling. Rather than think too hard on it, Cass let sleep claim him. 

The next morning was more than a little awkward as Jamison was the one cooking his porridge. Ana had told him to make enough to feed a small family, and the young former aide attacked his duty with gusto.

Cass’s favorite food had become a gluey mash of gunk unfit to enter a garbage bin. Every time Jamison turned around, Cass gave a smile of encouragement, but each bite felt like a betrayal to his taste buds.

I’m going to have words with Ana later.

He made it to his office with a great deal of extra time, so he put it to use by immediately pulling up the tutorial. The last stage had asked him to alter the size of the Quill’s new form. The next one went a different direction.

Step 6: Create a Hybrid Quest using the Airscript Quill

Note: You’ve been granted temporary System Reputation while the tutorial is ongoing.

“That’s it?”

Yes.

“...why?”

Why ask why?

Son of a bitch rarely likes to give me straight answers. If I poke, the Source will probably just leave.

“Well…Lure and Bane aren’t a great idea in the middle of a city.” 

He thought back to when he’d used Awaken on Joran. He didn’t remember seeing any visual effects to the Quest, but he still asked.

“Will anybody be able to tell if I use Awaken on myself?”

Only those with System-enhanced vision.

“Right. But it’s dependent on Monsters being nearby.”

That is no longer true. The versatility upgrade allows Hybrid Quests to be used outside the requirements of monster proximity.

Oh really? Well…I got here early enough that nobody should be coming in for the next hour. Just need to be done before they get here.

“Got it.”

Cass went into the Hybrid Quest’s options and set it to a 10-minute timer. Like Bane, there was a time-versus-intensity ratio. Setting it to 10 minutes would increase his reflexes, senses, or clarity to three times their usual level. 

When he’d used it on Joran, he’d given the Defender two times the reflex speed for twenty minutes. That had been enough to allow the man to stall a high-tier Rake, allowing everyone in his group to escape at the cost of the man’s armor.

With a mental flick, he changed the Awaken option from Reflexes to Clarity, then drafted it with the Quill in its natural form. An off gold coloring moved from the Quill to his chest, then quiet reigned in the room as he took a deep breath.

Cass frowned. He already knew he could do that six more times before the drain became too much to handle.

The Quill’s upgrade is still paying for itself.

He took another deep breath, enjoying the mental freedom of the moment. For as long as Cass could remember, there had always been something demanding his attention. Another thought or feeling clawing for space in the back of his mind, pushing him in several directions. Now, everything was quiet. Even the disparate ideas alacrity had brought disappeared, leaving only the speed behind. 

It was unsettling in the silence.

He was speaking before the thought had fully registered in his mind, “You were in my head last night, weren’t you?”

Yes.

“You knew I needed help, so you created this scenario for me to learn how useful Awaken was for myself.”

The opportunity was available.

An invasion of privacy, thought it was, the results spoke for themselves. Placing the Quill as a ballpoint pen into his pocket, Cass looked at the wall as Command Center appeared. The tutorial faded away on its own as he focused only on the city before him.

I only have nine minutes before this wears off. Need to think big. 

As if by magic, he knew just what to do.

In the Fifth, most people got their food and sundries from several markets, but there were a few larger stores within the ring. He didn’t have all of the Profiles required to make what he had in mind work, yet, but he would by the evening. That meant he could set things up to succeed and keep succeeding once every piece of the puzzle was put together.

And what’s more, it would be a daily routine.

Cass spent the last bit of his time building pre-designed templates and seeding them into Anchors nearest to where it would all go down. When Awaken’s clarity finally wore off, he had a clear plan in mind, and the disparate thoughts of alacrity returned.

The day started with Quirrel and several Delivery Quests. Mirelle dropped by at one point with a sour look on her face to tell him that he’d be rotating into different Quest types each week. Cass took it in with a nod, then frowned when a huge stack of messages arrived right after.

“Well…I can do more than one-hundred now.”

In fact, Cass completed one hundred and eighty-seven quests during his time in the Annex that day. When he still managed to finish before five, Quirrel actually celebrated with him.

He probably thought we were staying late. Not today, my friend.

For completing his work on time, Cass received three vellums, rather than the two he’d always received in the past. He used one of them on the spot to give his personal Clerk a brand new Exponential Quest, then walked out of the tower to a waiting Adya and Bella.

The Scout and Cass shared a smile, then, as he touched his equine friend, more noise came to his mind.

I hath touched upon the sixth level.

Cass pulled himself up with Adya’s help, “What’s that do for you-”

Oh! Look thee there, a new glory doth unveil itself.

“Wait. What’s a glory?”

Bella held still while both Adya and Cass tried to look nonchalant in front of the stern-faced guards. A minute passed by, then she shook her head.

We go.

When they were approaching the third gate, Cass asked again, “What’s a glory?”

'Tis my manner of strengthening mineself.

“Like a path?”

Just.

“What’d she say?” Adya called back, so Cass repeated everything. The Scout mumbled back to him over the noise quietly enough that he had to turn on Attuned Listening.

“I bet it’s like your nodes and my marks.”

“That makes sense,” Cass said, pulling himself closer, “But glory? Why glory?”

Because I am glorious.

Cass decided to let that go.

The first stop of the evening was The Smoke Alley Market. It was a part of the oldest Fifth neighborhood, and he’d traveled all along its orderly aisles during his time being Awakened. 

Bella promised to be good as Cass and Adya walked around, speaking to as many people as they could and taking down their names. He also noted just how much food there was. When nobody was looking, he darted around a corner into an employee-only area and confirmed there were several bins of rotting food in the back.

The owner’s name was Mark Carlson. Cass focused on remembering that.

The next place they went to was owned by a small family that cooked food in large portions. It was just nearby, which was a sticking point if Cass’s plan was to work. The process repeated itself, then again with a small laborers' meetup location.

Laborers were a hardy bunch, and after a few drinks, most of them liked Cass enough to tell them their names and some debauchery they’d been up to. Adya was shocked by how well Cass fit in with the group, but he told her that kitchen staff were much worse, and he had plenty of experience with them due to his father.

The fourth stop was an orphanage, then a clinic, then the area's sole homeless shelter. Liberty was not conducive to giving freely, so the homeless had only a few places to go. 

Cass thought it was a shame, and both of his partners agreed with him.

When they were all done, they spent the rest of the evening eating and spending time together. Though he regretted it, Cass even activated a Quest with Bella, doubling the experience she gained from bucking and throwing him around. He didn’t do well as his muscles were still coming back, but he put up a much better fight than he’d expected. 

Just for kicks, he used another vellum with Adya, who received a much harsher ride, but took to it with ease.

Life is unfair.

That night, Cass assigned a few Support Quests in places they intentionally stayed away from, keeping the Guildtower off his trail, then fell asleep.

When he awoke, he was excited.

The first thing he did was send a Quest to Mark Carlson. For five experience a day, the man could donate food before it rotted, sending the extra produce to the nearby family that cooked large amounts each day. There was a chance the man would refuse the Quest, so Cass insured it just in case, using one of his newest abilities to protect his reputation.

To the family, Cass assigned another Quest, specifically to the matriarch in charge who’d had a kind disposition. Cook whatever food is brought to you from the market, then give it to the first person who comes asking for the delivery parcel. 

He was very careful to ensure that both the laborer and the cooks used the codeword "Friend of the Fifth" for the Questor to receive the package. He didn’t want a random passerby to grab food meant for his plan.

And so it went like this. Market went to the family; the family went to a deliverer from the laborer’s side; then it went to the Clinic, the Orphanage, or the Homeless shelter, rotating every day. 

It would take longer for the laborers to develop a Routine Quest, as that required them to complete it ten times, but all good things came to those who waited, and Cass’s patience had grown as he matured.

In the bath, Cass activated all four, then did his first Stalwart Daily in what felt like forever. Though his muscle mass was much smaller than it had been, it still performed well enough to complete the set. He then grew angry with himself for not doing the daily before he took his bath.

The rest of the day was spent in the Annex, but during his lunch, he double-checked his ledger.

Mark had already completed the Quest.

Cass smiled to himself and zoomed in on the family of cooks. The Quest was active, but incomplete at the moment. He knew they’d see it through.

More Quests moved in and out of the Annex, and before he was done, a notification came in.

[SYSTEM NOTICE]

A Quest Web you’ve created has satisfactorily completed in Liberty. All Quests involved gain a +200% xp modifier.

As this was a Quill-created Quest Web, any used Reputation has been refunded.

“And now I won’t lose Reputation through the Quill anymore,” Cass said with a grin. Then, he turned to the last ten Message Quests. 

His day was almost done.