118: Making Moves (Patreon)

Cousin Bob:

You have destroyed a Type II Dungeon Core (Goblin Lair). Rewards: 4 Dungeon Core Seed Fragments (Party Leader only), 50 Unbound Essence to each Party Member, 1 Safe Zone Token per each Party Member.

“And that’s that,” Party Leader Bob Acosta said.

“Nasty goblinssess,” Barton said in a poor Gollum accent.

Bob laughed and clapped Barton’s back. The Hex Wizard was really working through his social issues if he could joke around three strangers, two of whom had been combat veterans before Barton was born.

“Heh. Lord of the Rings. I get it,” George Buford said. He was now a fourth level Gunnery Sergeant (R), a Class that matched his rank in the Marine Corps. He turned to Gorman. “Remember when Lieutenant Torres tried to talk us into trying D&D, boss?”

Gorman Acosta – fourth level Commander (R) – nodded. “Funny how the stuff you used to laugh at turns deadly serious down the line.”

“Gorman, can I have a word?” Fred said. He’d only gotten an Uncommon Class – Fighting Scout – and he looked unhappy.

“Excuse us a second.”

The brothers stepped away. The cavern where the Goblin Chief had made his last stand was big enough that they could have a conversation out of earshot. At least, out of earshot if Bob didn’t have a Perception of sixty. It took people a while to process how much people’s bodies changed after you became an Ascendant, and Bob wasn’t above taking advantage of the situation.

Bob pretended to examine his loot while he overheard their whispered conversation.

“You’re really going to let that punk and my son take your land, Gorman?”

“I signed a contract.”

“You’re a lawyer. Don’t tell me you can’t find a loophole.”

“I might. But I’m happy with the deal I made.”

“Why? You bled for those seventy acres. And the hundred acres in Montana. Even if you don’t want to fight Roland, we could take our two tokens and head there.”

“Montana might as well be on the moon, Fred. If the balloon drops while we’re en route, we’ll be behind enemy lines, because enemy lines are everywhere. And two tokens give us less than three acres.”

“We can find more. All I’m saying is, this ain’t fair, brother.”

“Freddy, I say this with love. But only drooling imbeciles talk about things being fair or not. There ain’t no fairness on this side of the grave, and maybe not on the other, either.”

Fred stepped back. Gorman pressed on:

“Without Roland and your kid, the apocalypse would have caught us with our dicks in our hands. Chances are at least one of us would have died by day one. My contingency plans were worse than useless.

“You’ve seen it with your own eyes, Fred. Monsters that can stand up to small arms fire. The bunker would have been overrun within the week, if not the day. Imagine one of those Hobgoblins popping up in a storage closet while we’re sleeping. Now imagine six.”

“But...”

“And I’m not going to get into a pissing contest with a stone-cold killer. Which is what our nephew, ‘that punk,’ is. Cross him and you’d better hope your son has mercy on you, because Roland will have none.”

“Yeah, okay,” Fred said, defeated.

 “I’ve met his type. In the Marines, we’d have put him on a crew-served weapon, because he’ll never hesitate before sending rounds downrange. No matter what’s in his sights.” 

A brief sidelong glance toward Bob made him suspect that Gorman knew he could be overheard, unlike the idiot Bob had for a father.

Gorman had handled the Dungeon like a champ.

The Marine (‘There’s no such thing as an ex-Marine, bud,’ Gunny Buford had told Bob at the start of the Dungeon crawl) had outfitted himself with a .416 Rigby bolt-action. He’d used the literal elephant gun to drop Hobgoblins (the Dungeon’s version of Ratling Champions) with single shots to the vitals before he got his Class. After he became a Commander and upgraded the gun, he worked the bolt action so quickly one might think he was firing automatic bursts.

Fred Acosta, on the other hand, had panicked during the first fight and had two NDs (negligent discharges) in separate incidents. On the second, he actually managed to shoot Bob in the back. Luckily, Fred had carried an AR-15 and the .223 round had bounced off Bob’s breastplate and almost hit Gorman on the rebound.

I almost wish Gorman had knocked up Mom instead, Bob thought. Hey, maybe he did!

Setting the thought aside, Bob considered what he’d overheard. Gorman had been playing it up for Bob’s benefit, he was sure of it. But he also thought his uncle meant what he said. For now.

The contract had a provision naming the Viceroy as the new Lord if Roland got his ass killed. There were also provisions stipulating that if the Viceroy was responsible in any way for the Lord’s death, he’d die seconds later.

Gorman was likely betting that Roland’s risky lifestyle would do the job for him. That meant he’d toe the line until that dark day. Which Bob hoped would never come to pass.

He tuned out the rest of the conversation and checked his loot for real. Nothing special: a Rare dagger that might do for a backup if he had to fight someone in an elevator or other confined space, a useful Ring of Regeneration just like the one Dahlia got on their first crawl, and an Endless Round, an Epic bullet that could fit any cartridge-using firearm ever made and would self-replicate every time you pulled the trigger.

Put that on a fifty-caliber Ma Deuce and your only worry would be melting the barrel from continuous auto-fire. Upgrade a Ma Deuce into a Rare or Epic machinegun...

Just the thing to have at the Gates of Gondor.

“Gunnery Sergeant Buford, can I ask you a question?”

Uncle Gorman’s business partner looked up from his freshly upgraded M249 Squad Automatic Weapon. Buford and Gorman had adapted to the new realities with shocking speed.

“Yes?”

“Any chance we can get our hands on an M2?”

Buford grinned. “Might be I know where we can find a few Ma Deuces, soldier.”

Bob smiled back and resisted the urge to salute. Buford had been an E-7, but the guy commanded a lot more respect than most officers Bob had ever known.

A few! Maybe I should have been a Marine.

*

Roland left the Dungeon with two more Safe Zone Tokens. He was up to eighteen, and he figured he’d be close to thirty by the end of the day, when the other teams came back. Enough to cover a good section of Gorman’s land, including all the structures inside – and below it. Gorman had promised him a tour of his underground shelter tomorrow.

That was the second Dungeon he’d cleared in the three hours since he’d arrived at Salisbury.

Once there, he had been met by Gorman’s wife, Inara Acosta, a beautiful woman in her late forties. Gorman had filled her in, and she had insisted on accompanying Wendy and Josh on their Dungeon clearing trip, along with her twenty-one-year-old son, Mike Acosta, who had arrived shortly before Roland’s group did.

Mike had joined the Marines, but a training exercise mishap had left him with a bad leg injury that ended his military career. A Common Healing Potion fixed his leg; watching the metal screws in his knee pop out had turned mother and son into believers PDQ.

Irana gave Roland the keys to a customized Humvee. Driving the civilian version of the military vehicle reminded Roland of his time in the Army. Roland left Raven to watch over Mandy and went Dungeon-crawling.

Finding Dungeons turned out to be amazingly easy: if there was one within a third of your Perception in miles, you could feel its presence as well as its general direction.

Roland, Wendy, and Josh had detected half a dozen on the drive to Gorman’s place. They didn’t stop for any of them, though; he wanted Mandy safe before they went hunting. They marked the locations on their maps and saved them for later.

Mandy had tried to invite herself to one of the Dungeon crawls, but she hadn’t really tried very hard. Discouraging her didn’t take much work. The hair-raising stories Josh regaled her on the drive over with were enough to convince her that it wasn’t something she would find interesting or entertaining.

Then she had tried to talk them out of risking their lives. That hadn’t worked, either.

Roland’s first target was another Vermin Dungeon just on the edge of Gorman’s land, a much smaller, non-spawning one. The Dungeon only had three levels and its Bosses were Ratling variants, none of them harder than Doctor Flinders.

He’d murdered them all at a run, clearing every room on his way to the next level’s entrance. A couple of traps slowed him down, but his travel powers got him through most of them, and he tanked the ones that went off in his face.

The fights were no challenge. Even Lieutenants melted after a few seconds of exposure to his auras. There were a few Garbage Golems whose Cores weren’t affected by Death energy, but he disassembled them easily enough. His physical damage was more than he needed to do the job.

The second Dungeon was near Bear Mountain, by a hiking trail where two people had gone missing over the weekend. Roland picked up three wandering monsters on his way there: they turned out to be freaking Skunk Apes, which were just as bad as their name suggested.

The Dungeon to be populated by more of the repulsive things.

Congratulations! Cleanse has improved to Beginner 5! New Feat available!

The new Feat he picked was, unsurprisingly, Air Freshener, which removed particulates from a fairly large volume of air, killing smells better than Febreze. Cleanse hit Beginner 6 by the time he had finished off the final Boss.

Okay, that sucked.

The combined loot from the Dungeons was hardly worth the trouble, either. Mostly Uncommon or Rare random drops, a bunch of healing potions of the same quality, a hundred and sixty gold pieces, and a bit over four hundred Unbound Essence total. Most of the minion kills didn’t give him anything.

Roland was fine with that. The goal was to cull the Dungeons near Gorman’s area to reduce the hazards that would hit the area when Integration kicked off. Everything else was strictly secondary.

He removed his phone from inventory, where it was safe from the Dungeon’s high Mana concentration, and saw he had two voicemails and three texts from Dahlia.

“I made it,” she said when he called her. “Parents came too. Uh, it got complicated.”

“Okay, I’ll be there in a few.”

*

“What happened?”

They were in Roland’s room, located in the detached pool house of Gorman’s compound. It was nicer than his old apartment. She wanted to talk to him in private, so they met there.

For a change, she didn’t bring Bloodykee along, leaving the furball on sentry duty on the roof of the manor.

“I sort of kidnapped my parents.”

“Well, it was for their own good. I’m sure they’ll get over it.”

“And I kind of killed Victor.”

“You what?”

Dahlia looked abashed. “Killed him. A little. Painlessly. Mostly painlessly. There may have been a broken arm before it was over. Sprained for sure. But he didn’t suffer long. It was downright humane.”

“Dahlia...”

“He started it! I got it on video! I got pics, ‘cause it did happen!”

Roland sighed as he reviewed the incriminating video evidence. Dahlia’s ex-boyfriend had broken into her converted garage apartment, wielding a knife, and lay in ambush, waiting for her. She kept the recording going, but when the struggle began, the phone ended up videoing the ceiling while Dahlia broke the bastard’s arm, followed by his neck. The noises told the tale.

“You know he didn’t really pose a threat to you,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, but if he had, I’d be dead! Should I wait until he gets a Class, something like Murderous Edgelord, and then let him take a shot at me before I kill him?”

She had a point, and Roland realized that he didn’t care enough about the dearly departed lowlife to give the matter much more thought. He wasn’t sure what that said about his morals and character. Nothing good, probably.

“Are you mad at me?”

“Not really,” Roland told her. “Just don’t be too quick to kill people going forward. Life is going to be cheap soon enough. No need to become murder hobos.”

“Okay. Just so we’re cool. Okay?”

“We’re cool.”

“Can’t say I’m sorry I killed him, though,” she admitted. “If he had walked away, I wouldn’t have killed him. Even after he called me a cow. I swear I would have let him live. Maybe rough him up a little. But he tried to stab me. He wanted to murder me because he got arrested for beating me up.”

“Yeah, I’m not shedding any tears for him. There’s no lack of assholes in the world, so he was surplus to requirements.”

That startled a laugh out of Dahlia. She looked relieved, and had a manic gleam in her eye, listening intently as Roland went on:

“And I’m not one to talk. I’ve killed three people. Humans. No, sorry. Four people. Not sure if Dungeon dwellers count, but they probably do.”

“If Dungeon monsters count, we’ve killed enough to make it to the record books. Who’s the fourth human?”

“Someone from before the System came. I never told anybody. Not even my sister.”

“Who was it?”

Roland sighed again. “The guy who killed my parents.”

“Oh, shit. The drunk driver?”

He nodded. “He was a rich kid. Well, he was thirty, but he still behaved like a rich kid. Murdered my parents, drove off, and abandoned his car. He or someone in his family reported it stolen. There wasn’t a lot of traffic that night. Nobody called EMS until an hour later. They might have saved my mom if they’d got to her sooner. He left them to die.”

“How’d he get away with it?”

“Car was stolen, allegedly. Camera footage of who was driving it was ‘inconclusive.’ I’m sure someone got paid off, maybe more than one. His father was the Dean of the Yale School of Management. Money and influence. His high-rent lawyers did the rest. The bastard got off clean.”

Old feelings came back. The helpless rage when he heard the news. By then, a social worker with a grudge against the Acosta side of the family had sent him to foster care. Mandy was spared that, thankfully, because Fred Acosta’s ex-wife took her in.

Roland’s time in the system (the old kind) only lasted two years; at seventeen he joined the Army. But that was later. That day, rage was all he had in the world.

It was a cold rage, though. Relentless and focused. He didn’t lose his temper, didn’t throw a tantrum. He kept quiet and made plans.

Her eyes were brighter now. Crazy eyes, Bob would call them. “How did you..?”

“I went to the library a lot. Checked him out on the internet. There wasn’t much info, but I eventually figured out where he lived. A few miles from my foster home. I began to sneak out and go visit. Late at night.”

“How about security? Rich people have cameras and alarms and shit.”

“You see, when he went out drinking, he turned off most of it. That way, if something happened, he could report his car stolen again. I came over during weekends. I saw him do it three times. Turn the cameras off – their little red lights would go off – and go get drunk.”

Dahlia nodded. “You were stalking him.” She unconsciously licked her lips. “Predator and prey.”

“Yeah. The fourth time, there was a storm. He’d gone out when I arrived. So I waited in the rain, under a tree. Lucky I didn’t get struck by lightning.”

He’d been soaked to the bone. Cold enough his teeth were chattering. But he waited patiently, until he began dozing off.

In the sudden silence after a thunderclap, a bird cawed, loudly enough that it shook him awake. That was when he saw him.

“He was staggering home, drunk like a skunk. There was a little path between the house and the swimming pool. That’s where I tackled him. We went into the pool together.”

There was a little smile on her face, but her eyes were tearing up a little. She understood what he’d been feeling then. That savage satisfaction when he grabbed that bastard and dragged him under.

Telling the story made his eyes water, too, but he didn’t cry. That’s not what men did.

“You drowned him,” she said.

Roland breathed out slowly, the old rage ebbing away, and blinked away the moisture in his eyes. He might have shed a tear after the bastard stopped struggling underwater, but that was okay. It could have been just the rain.

A short breath was all he needed for the answer. “Yep.”

She nodded along. “Felt good, didn’t it?”

He looked into her eyes, saw himself there. “Yep.”

She came closer. “Are we bad people who do good things sometimes? Or good people who sometimes do bad things?”

“I don’t know.”

She took his hand. “Neither do I.”

He pulled her much closer. Kissed her hard.