A Survivor's Guide to Planetary Apotheosis [Postapocalyptic Survival, LitRPG, and Dungeon]

Irritated glares daggered at him from the combatants in the sparring ring. That was natural. Nobody liked to be told they're doing it wrong. But, when Grace asked him to say whenever he saw someone doing it wrong, he took her at her word. If they'd just stop doing it wrong, he'd stop saying so.

"Dan's dropping his elbow again." He had just finished informing the Guildies in the ring, prompting them to stop their spar to stare in annoyance at him.

As if it were his fault that they were bad. It was the fifth time he'd given that criticism, and Private Dan refused to learn, and would stay a Silver his entire, probably short, life. He'd be killed the first time he fought a monster that used rapid, aggressive, slashing attacks. Like a Yeti. Or a werewolf.

"He can't counter thrust if his elbow's down like that in a hanging right guard, and it's not covering right, which is why Ox keeps slapping away at him," Alexander explained reasonably, just quoting the HEMA longsword treatises, "there's no riposte. Meanwhile, Corporal Ox swings a sword like his spine is fused, it's stiff, there's no power, no leg to it."

For three hours, ever since the ten o'clock bell, he'd been leaned against the sparring ring stall barrier, watching men at arms flail at each other, using his exquisite vision to analyze the less masterful of the Peacekeeper armsmen. It was frankly aggravating.

One of the first things that had happened after the Pulse, was some gods blessed uber nerd for combat arts had given a Librarian their longsword combat treatises, translated from German and Italian, two of the major schools of arms. That Librarian memorized and transcribed them, shared them with the martial classes locally, who discovered that many of the old timers from before and around the Renaissance had had a few things to say about the use of weapons to slay armed and armored men, which had its applications in slaying armed and armored monsters. More documents had come, their effectiveness proven, the nonsense discarded, and then more, rapidly thereafter. English saber. Italian side sword and rapier. A whole parade of kata from Asian schools of weapons use. No fewer than five different spear fighting schools. Kali and Escrima for knives and short blades. A revolution in the use of arms.

Libraries were combed and every scrap of information regarding armed techniques was dug up, compiled, and shared out to as many settlements as possible, or sold, depending on how greedy the settlement happened to be. Safe Harbor's guilds had sold the bound texts cheap to the local Adventurer parties, who took them more or less to heart.

Benjamin Grisham hadn't just taken them to heart, they'd become his bible, and he, their prophet. He preached with his body and the instrument in his hand. Alexander was one of his converts. After getting gutted by Yeti, kicked around by wolves and cougars, and whatever else, and finding out quickly in Safe Harbor that his innate powers were being wasted through ignorance of how to use them in a fight, he learned, when he had the spare time. After an assassination attempt from Safe Harbor's guild had almost killed him, thanks in large part to his inattention to training with Getsome, he never skipped practice again. No matter how he tried, he couldn't best the Adamantine Knight in a contest of weapons. Ben's first rule was to study the old ways, so first thing you did was read the compiled HEMA documentation for the weapons with which you commonly used in the Green. Or, so he would have thought, however, all morning, some of these Guildies kept swinging training weapons around like they'd never cracked the covers. Others showed that they had, but they weren't diligent in their study, were only half using the manuals, which is why he kept having to tell this warrior who was no longer considered a mere novice, to keep that goddamned elbow up.

"Fuck's sake, Captain," bitched Dan, "We can't even take a few passes without this sissy boy yapping."

Grace Miller nodded and entered the sparring ring, bending over to powder her hands with its soft clay before she took up her alder great sword, carved roughly in proportion to the one she usually carried.

"I'm glad you feel that way, Private Dan." She said, with casual menace, "It tells me you're not taking this seriously, because after the third time he told you to lift your elbow when you guard, you should have goddamned well lifted your elbow, so you don't get gutted by the things that sissy just killed." Captain Miller instructed.

"Since you don't wanna learn the easy way, I'm going to show you the hard way." She promised, eagerness in her tone, "Ox, kick rocks for a few, huh? And watch my hips and back when I swing, it's like golf, everything comes from there."

Private Dan paled slightly and appeared regretful at having run his jaws. Nothing personal man, Alexander intoned within his head, I'll put flowers on your grave.

The two Peacekeepers readied up. Dan had his longsword in a hengetort, the hanging guard, elbows up at the temple, two handed grip slightly overhead, blade extended forward but with the tip tilted down at chin level, covering the head and pressuring the centerline, but defensively. Captain Miller was in the tag, the high guard, great sword overhead vertically. It was an aggressive posture, meant for attacking. A refereeing Sergeant dropped his hand to signal the start and Grace brought her sword down in a series of three deceptive vertical to side cuts, smooth strokes using back and hips to power them, a small side step between each to force the Private to shift to meet them, each snapping back to her high guard between, permitting very little window to counter. Twice the crack of her alder against the oak of Dan's, as his form held up. Then, on the third stroke, he dropped his elbow again, and Grace blew through his attempted parry and laid a blow against his ribs that would have hacked him apart at the nipples had her sword been steel. As it was, two ribs broke with a loud snap, and Dan fell down groaning through gritted teeth.

"Dan, you're dropping your elbow again." Grace said without inflection to the fallen man, sort of unnecessarily, but some guys just didn't learn unless you spelled it out in neon lights.

"Hnnngg…thanks Captain…fuuuuuggghin, I'll keep an eye on it." Dan managed a high-pitched wheeze, attitude corrected, and a few of his comrades gently lifted him out of the sparring ring to be attended to by some of Healer Brenda's adjutants.

"Alright! I'm warmed up, who wants to give it a go?" Grace asked her comrades.

A few hands went up and Alexander got to watch the spectacle of Grace Miller whipping the dogshit out of her fellow Peacekeepers, using that piece of Alder to assert her will over them, not just through overwhelming power and reach, but through correct technique. She'd seen some shit, had the Oread red cloak, and done some shit. A weapon for mankind, she reminded him of Cervantez in a lot of ways. Especially after the man's lover had been murdered by Safe Harbor assassins, he'd taken a hard edge after that.

With half the onlookers now sporting bruises and tenderized egos, Captain Miller beckoned for her next victim, er, sparring partner, "C'mon guys, I've been gone two days and you're softening up over here."

A Latino man of just slightly less giant stature than the Nordic woman unfurled, standing and selecting out a billhook polearm, one side of its sculpted wood blade recurve machete, the other side a bearded axe.

"Fuck it! Medics need practice too. I'm game!" the man volunteered, the three knots on his cloak proclaiming him a sergeant.

"Hell yeah, Luigi!" Grace said, grinning now, anticipating a challenge, "What is this, third, fourth time this month? You're getting better."

"Yep, kicked Frank's ass yesterday. Took a point off Captain Mason too, but he whooped me after that, so I call it a lucky one, hermano's under the gun with things." Agreed the man confident, but aware he was probably outmatched.

The oversized humans readied themselves, Captain Miller still in that high guard, Luigi using his billhook in a spear variation of that same hanging guard the private had used, only his form was crisp, comfortable.

Down came the hand and Grace lived up to her name, launching a salvo of blows with easy steps that circled, approached, and retreated in dizzying sequence, never staying in the same place to give her opponent a consistent angle to counter her swipes and thrusts.

The other man was good, he met her attacks with calm and used the complex blade to threaten multiple times, hooking catches with the beard of the axe, twists to cut with the machete side, bashes with the solid hickory pole that would have split skin against somebody without Soak. Nothing hit clean, and they danced, trying to force each other into a mistake.

Alexander watched close, looking for weakness, as he'd been instructed to, as he always did. Call it an instinct, something that had lived there since before the Pulse, probably one of those innate things that had led to the Venator part of his abilities. He spotted the failure the same time Captain Miller did, a single foot out of place, a forward step where it should have been a retreat, and the two huge forms closed together, Captain Grace binding her sword against Luigi's billhook haft, tying up his arms while she kicked that weak leg on the inside of the knee, then slung him over her hip, and finished with the edge of her practice sword laid against his neck.

One wrong step, that's all it took sometimes, the Patriarch of clan Gerifalte nodded once.

"Damn! Thought I could pressure there!" Sergeant exclaimed, accepting the helping hand to rise from his opponent.

Grace shook her head at him, "Nope!" she replied, "It's still my turn from that position."

A turn of her head to address him, "What say you, Ranger Gerifalte? Anything to add?"

Alexander thought about the sequence, seeing each movement in turn, a set of movements revisited like instant replay. Outsider perception was an incredible synthesis of spatial awareness and visual acuity. He mapped the world in fine detail in his head, in high definition, thanks to it. Post fight examinations were conducted frame by frame in his mind, which was one of the reasons he adapted to monsters so quickly.

"Three moves back, Sergeant, you turned her sword off center on a really sharp parry, you used that beard well, pulled it out of alignment and Grace took a crossing step to free herself while your feet were set. You had a window then, maybe a quarter second to push forward, using your polearm to leverage the blade farther out of position while you closed the gap and had a dominant foot placement, with better balance." He answered.

The two Guildies exchanged looks and walked over, retrieving towels to mop up the sweat on their faces while they did. They leaned against the wall and looked down on where he was slouched, head cradled in his arms so he could watch in comfort. Relative comfort, his legs still ached and he was still hungry.

"I didn't think anybody saw that." Captain Miller said, which was fair, nobody else had.

"I see everything. It's why I'm still alive, even though I don't have any Soak." He reported honestly.

The Sergeant was frowning, brow furrowed, while he worked something out for himself. Eventually he just asked, "Can you do that for all the fights this morning?"

Alexander gave the pair of them a thumbs up, "You bet! I referee spars for our guys in Falcon's Rest so they can figure out how to improve faster, when I'm not sparring myself, of course. You learn a lot just watching the good fighters, even if I can't exactly replicate the stuff people with distinctly higher parameters do. Like Grace with that claymore, I couldn't try those repeat strikes, she's way stronger than I am, I couldn't get it back to ready without leaving a gap somebody else could take advantage of. If you guys want, I'll write up a spar log for this morning to use to help these dudes fix the big stuff."

This was the kind of thing that could save lives, it was worth an hour of down time and some paper and ink to write up a play by play for the soldiers to use for their training.

"Damn, it's like having film for sports teams to review. What an edge." Commented Luigi, his brown eyes appreciative.

"You're such a cheating cheater." Grace accused.

"Fair fights are for people who don't want to win." Alexander quoted, which drew a laugh, because all students of war learned that lesson was the most important.

The trick to war was making it so goddamned unfair the enemy didn't want to in the first place. And, if they did, you take them apart so viciously you don't get hurt in the process, if at all possible. He applied that mentality to pretty much everything he did nowadays. Make weapons that cheat. Brew poisons that cheat. Set traps that cheat. Come at them from behind, while they were looking elsewhere, talk about their mother, whatever it took. He hunted to eat, not for sport.

An Ifrit lady with two knots on her brooch directed a challenging tone toward him, saying "Hey, just watching's no fun, get in there and show us how it's done Spooky."

Captain Miller frowned slightly but said, "Your call Alexander. No pressure, I know what you did for us yesterday. Don't hurt yourself is all, I'm under orders to keep you out of trouble."

Was she chumming the water on purpose? That was just not how you talk around the soldiery, it got them all frothy for fresh meat.

Now it was his turn to roll his eyes at her.

"Well, now I pretty much have to you know? I swear, you have, like, zero social sense." He accused, which was the pot calling the kettle black, to some extent.

Actually, he could mostly fit in if he wanted to. He'd pulled it off all through small town public education, after all. But just because he knew the rules, didn't mean he was able to follow them all the time. It was too boring. People were way too much of a pain in the ass with their infinite contextual social bullshit most of the time. It's why he got along best with people like Ben and Granny, rather than the gadflies.

Gaping, the Oread Captain looked around for support, but got none. They hadn't been around him long enough to become aware of his distinct brand of weird and they were well exposed to hers. The few confirming nods cemented Grace the Graceless as having a distinct flaw in her otherwise perfection.

"Friggin traitors!" Captain Miller accused, "And you! Go ahead, just remember, don't hurt yourself and don't do anything that can't be reasonably treated by the medics, we try not to use our cores inside the sparring ring, that's for live fire exercises."

Which is how Alexander found himself in the sparring ring, bouncing a light short sword in his hand, the closest shape they had to his Messer, with the Ifrit lady. She was a full half foot shorter than he, similar ages, chestnut hair shortened into a pixie cut, a narrow chin reddish orange skin, and charcoal black irises that almost made her pupils seem lighter in comparison. By her agile build he was certain she liked quick kills and her choice of a long estoc confirmed that. She was like some kind of imp, a hell-boy lite. No tail though, what a shame. He wasn't watching for the hand that dropped, he was completely focused on the enemy.

That left leg of his wasn't going to take much abuse, he'd do what he could to avoid making unnecessary steps. No footwork at all, if he could help it. Luckily, his opponent was hotheaded, impatient, and her form was easy to read, even if he didn't see the black outlines of her mana projecting her motions ahead of them.

"Gonna stare all day? Let's get it!" Cried the Impish Guildie and she thrust.

He received the tip on his short sword and pushed it to the side, not moving, since that hurt and this was troublesome enough. Her choice of weapon was a terrible one to fight him with, as Melinda, Getsome's Luminous Pathfinder found out during their spars, since she also preferred the long stabbing weapons.

A grunt at the failed attack, a withdrawal of the point that he didn't step forward to prevent, even though it was pretty easy to beat thrusting swords once you parried a committed thrust like that. Then another attempt, which he pushed away identically, still keeping his feet in place. A third.

"What is this? You not even trying?" The Imp asked, getting intemperate at the continued failure of her kill shots that worked on most of the noncoms, but never did against the Captains, for some reason.

Her problem was simple, he thought, she was a one-dimensional fighter. Just speed. Only, the Eximius was faster. Skin Peelers were faster. The Vampire Lord he'd fought in its lair in Nut was much, much faster. There was a wide world outside New Chicago that the Guildie hadn't experienced that he had. A fighting style built purely around speed sucked when you came up against things that were faster than you. Balance in all things. Might and Impetus unified by Grace to make power. It was a fundamental concept in most books on close combat.

"Not really? You're so slow." Commented Alexander, knowing it would get her good and riled, and also because it was true.

That sally prompted a volley of stabs from a variety of angles that he picked off cleanly, snapping each out wide on their points, where he had so much leverage against her wrist it took almost no effort. It was kind of fun, like an exercise they did sometimes where you planted your feet and you had to defend attacks without moving, using just shifts in body and arm, to simulate this exact scenario, a leg injury that limited your mobility. He started to smile as he saw the frustration mounting on the Ifrit's face and she started to add cuts that were parried as easily as the thrusts. The problem with long weapons was that manipulating their points was such a huge mechanical advantage for his shorter weapon, he was on the long axis of the lever, using her wrists as the fulcrum, it was a hell of a lot of torque. He'd be able to take her sword from her in a few more tries, he could feel her grip weakening as he added strength to his parries gradually.

"Huh, so he wasn't full of shit." Luigi said to his Captain, watching the show.

She was watching intently; other than the slimes she hadn't gotten to watch the Venator fight. She'd seen his Scroll and wanted to see what full speed looked like. So far, Corporal Bradly wasn't even close to a hit. At this rate, she wouldn't get to see even a little bit what had killed the Infiltrator, which had looked pretty good and hacked up, to the point it had attempted to flee, or what had taken out Gibbons and Howard together.

"Nope." She replied, disappointed, "Concorde hired a killer and that insane asylum they got in Falcon's Rest delivered. We're gonna have to get somebody better than Bradly in there if we wanna push him; she's too one note, this guy's been around. Something's in the water up there, they're stacked with Mithrils."

A stab at the knee he obviously favored was the end of the drill, Alexander chopped hard clockwise to bury the tip of the lancing sword deep into the clay, jarring her wrist and hand hard, then rotated his wrist counter clockwise and swept her sword up and away, her weakened grip lost against the disarm with so much force behind it and it sailed away to land somewhere on the ambulatory, to judge by the sound of broken glass and a curse, "Damn you, Adams!" hurled from that direction from someone who had been suddenly assaulted by practice weapon hail,

"Aaaand done." Alexander called the game, thoroughly enjoying the discomfit of the Guildie, who was severely put out at having failed to force him to do anything more than move one arm.

"Sorry. Watching turned out to be more fun after all, it's boring when you're this slow." Alexander twisted the knife, because he wasn't always a nice person, and left the sparring floor, walking slow and steady because that left leg was just not having it.

The Guildies took the performance at face value. They had some growing up to do if they wanted to join their Officers in the top ranks. A few Silvers, mostly Golds here, with Luigi probably sitting around Platinum. Nobody under Mithil ever got a red cloak. Alexander couldn't have done that against Grace, he knew that much. Neither could he have against Marvin Pruitt and he'd only seen the man throw two punches and a single cut from his axe. They were a separate league from these lesser warriors. Every red cloak in that conference room was monstrous in their own right.

Corporal Imp stalked off, livid, and he imagined she'd sit down and figure out the point of this lesson sooner or later, after she'd cooled down a bit. After all, when someone told you, who relied on one thing, that your one thing wasn't enough, it was obvious to find something else to add to it, to put another arrow in the quiver. A joker in the deck.

Captain Miller greeted him with a wry tilt to her head, and a cryptic, "Thought I said no wounds medics can't heal, Ranger Alexander."

He squinted a little, and reviewed the 'spar'. Nope, he hadn't even touched the Guildie Imp with his sword.

"What do you mean? Didn't hurt her at all." He argued.

"No medic is gonna be able to save that pride, hermano." Countered Sergeant Luigi.

Now he was frowning, "Pride is why she wasn't getting any better. I bet she was stalled, not figuring out how she kept losing to the uppers, the ones of you that could see her thrusts and parry correctly. A Yeti took my pride, with most of my guts, one day six years ago, and I've been better off without it since."

Luigi clapped him on the back and laughed, "That sounds like something Captain Samantha said to me one time. Only it was Wyvern and it impaled her. Tough love, bud. Probably right though, Bradley's fight record was plateauing. Know something, new guy? You're not so bad."

Captain Grace called a break in the training to "review your preconceptions and think on what we've learned here" before addressing him directly, looming unintentionally, as she frequently did, because some part of her refused to accept that she was eight feet tall.

"This went even better than I hoped! Let's get something to eat, I'm fucking jonesing for some red meat right now." She declared, a satisfied, and somewhat mother hawkish look directed at her junior warriors, the kind they had before they pushed the chicks out of the nest to fly, or not.

It was different when she did it, they'd come to expect to lose to her. In a way, they didn't grow as much because they'd started to accept defeat before the first blow. It was rarer the Luigis that always came at you with everything, no matter how often they lost. They wouldn't soon forget one of theirs getting the ass beat off them by a strange guy who didn't have to move to do it though. It would motivate them.

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Alexander felt his whole entire body respond to the mention of food, and he salivated immediately, crying "Goddess! Lead this one to the promised land, none shall bar the way!"

"So weird." Grace replied, and yet the Goddess did take her pilgrim to the domain of succor, and it was good.

Red meat hit differently right now, it seemed to satisfy a particular craving of the expanded hunger inflicted on Alexander's body by the tier strain. He understood a little why the Eximius pair had grown so desperate, especially the Infiltrator, who he had tracked all those long miles across the continent. It was starving. They were starving.

By reaching the threshold of tier four and refusing to go beyond they'd backed themselves into a corner. That was the good news, they didn't just carry the nascent dungeon cores around with them in a little web tactical pouch, or knapsack of doom or whatever. With so much mana condensed inside the realm shard, it would have proven a tempting target from other realms, a feast to advance the tiers of the predators that roamed from the corrupted regions left over from the Big Break. Alexander knew, had witnessed first hands vicious encounters between denizens of different realms. They went at each other as hard as they did Gaians. New Chicago made sense for other reasons in that context: it was safe. The Peacekeepers, the public government of the city, it had combined to keep the entire area relatively free of incursion by dungeon spawn of any realm. Lots of food, safety, so long as they stayed hidden, the Eximius had found a perfect place to raise their little baby dungeon.

A figure at his side stirred him from the last remnants of the rib bone he was chewing, his teeth gnawing at the last scraps of flesh from a bovine source. Probably bovine, best not to ask too many questions, cook books were more diverse than before the Pulse. He looked up to find the dark eyes, salt and pepper beard, light brown skin, and a somewhat bewilderingly dashing smile from Captain Marvin Pruitt.

"I passed by Corporal Bradley, lady looked like somebody killed her dog, what gives?" He joked, bubbly, instead of the normal detached rational calm or mellow humor.

"Welcome back from the dead, Marvin." Captain Miller said, without looking up from her drowsy slouch against a cushioned, highbacked chair she'd pulled up to the table, eschewing a bench, still with eyes closed she continued her narration, "The Corporal bit off more than she could chew. Musashi here showed her why she can't take points off the brass, and he wasn't very nice about it. Guess we've been coddling her a little."

"Hmmph, well, we all gotta learn sooner or later." Philosophized the black man, still radiating good cheer.

He then winked in Alexander's direction, to let the young man know he was about to derail this train. Common courtesy.

"Damn, that woman knows how to show a man she cares." He announced, bragging without heed for his own safety, with ice blue eyes locking on him in disapproval as he did.

"I see you two are eating, no surprise there, so I'll spare you the details, but there's some fun in the whole 'Oh no! I can't move' play. Try it out sometime, I give it a nine out of ten." Captain Pruitt proclaimed, broad beaming smile breaking the usual calm composure.

Bastard.

"Marvin, I'm telling you, you have to stop with that gloating after you get laid. Some of us, we haven't had the luxury recently." Grace scolded her senior officer, and Alexander nodded his agreement vehemently.

She'd already cleaned her plate, and was leaned back, her arms crossed over her chest while the food coma settled on her. The very picture of contentment, until the older man had come a calling, returning to duty with a bounce in his step and a glow on his brow that sizzled her briskets.

Accusing tone, the giantess pointed toward Alexander, suddenly adjusting her targeting, "And this one keeps pouring salt in the wound! How do you think I found him this morning, Marv? Butt naked on the floor, like a newborn fawn! I can't take this much longer, I'm going to have to get a day off sometime soon."

Now wait a second, he thought, that's not how that went. Or, it was, but that wasn't the whole story.

"Now wait a second!" Alexander objected, "Who was it that kicked in a man's door in the morning without so much as a by your leave? You can't lay that on me, Captain, I'm the victim here! My modesty was violated. An injured man at that, you Flatlander barbarian."

Captain Pruitt sat down unbidden at the table, flaring his red cloak out behind him so he didn't sit on it as he did.

"Look, Alexander, I think we've moved on past all that rank stuff by this point, you can't be leading Grace on. I'll be frank here, if it weren't for those creepy ass eyes you'd be a dish, a fast ball over the plate. She's a woman, a lot of woman, with a lot of needs. I know it's fun to pull a tiger's tail sometimes, but there's limits. Tigers, they like to pounce on the wounded, the defenseless, you can't just tease like that." Captain Pruitt chided, his confiding tone even more irritating than the actual words he used it on.

"Yeah!" Captain Miller seconded, without evidence of sarcasm in her voice, "It's cruel and unusual punishment. And we were getting on pretty well before you had to go and do that. Uncalled for Mister."

He looked between the two Officers, men and women of honor, of prestige, held to the highest expectation of the most prestigious guild in the entire Midwest.

"You bastards." He accused.

They smiled predator's smiles, like wolves circling a deer, the both of them, and Marvin tilted his bearded chin in acceptance, "Peacekeepers stick together Gerifalte."

He narrowed his eyes at the Marid, and questioned, "That why you tried to freeze her yesterday?"

"Had to. I gave orders and she disobeyed them, even officers gotta respect the chain of command. The direct commands of a superior are law. Discipline fails otherwise." He replied easily, bullshitting like it was second nature.

"It's in the charter, not that you would know, Yankee-doodle." Grace confirmed, working with her comrade against the new fucking guy.

So, this is how it was when you were on the in. They were ruthless shit heads to each other. Like most soldier outfits, to outsiders, they maintained a veneer of stoic professionalism, of brusque warrior dignity. Inside? Different story. He should've known.

"Gods above, below, and in between, I'm surrounded by assholes." Alexander declared, to the cafeteria table, and several mugs of milk, ale, water, or whatever else raised in toast in the mess hall.

"Welcome to the Peacekeepers. Unofficially." Grace told him, proud of her Guild.

Alexander sat up, "I never joined! You can't prove anything! This is conscription!"

Marvin spoke up, still in good humor, but not joking, "Rules were in the old days, you had to be vouched for by two of the twenty red cloaks and get the blessing of the Guild Master. Since I hear Sam asked you to join up that's that part. Me, well, you pulled my bacon off of two fires. And Grace, she wouldn't let you bird dog the journeyman Peacekeepers training unless she was confident in you."

Alexander was leery, visibly. He was an independent operator and preferred it that way. Besides, hierarchies didn't like people that ignored them.

"Commitment issues, typical." Grace commented drily, "Don't worry, you're not tied down or part of the command structures. We just won't treat you like the other Adventurer mercs that run around Chitown. Like stray dogs, you can feed'em, maybe even play around with them, but they don't get inside until they gets their shots."

Oh, his hackles lowered. Well, that's not so bad then. Being counted as one of the guys was fine, he just wouldn't be saluting anybody.

"Word is there's no real Guild in Falcon's Rest, that so?" Grace asked, while Marvin rose to fetch his own lunch, shifting gears from harassing him.

Alexander didn't bother to deny that, "Yeah, we sort of don't want there to be any temptation for anybody to try what Safe Harbor pulled. Us founders, well, we all had our reasons to get out of town, even before the shit that went down. Some of us with talents being overlooked, some too independent or too exceptional to fit into the big ten power structures, some others just didn't like the townie life. What it came down to though, was the Guilds were turning into some kind of barony, with everybody else turning into their serfs real quick like."

He thought over those short weeks between his blacklisting and the launch of the expedition to found Falcon's Rest.

"I'll be honest, it was trending to bad. One Guildie psycho, he tried to rape a girl, I mean a young girl, she was one of the youngest survivors of the Pulse I ever met, and he got his balls hacked off for it by one of her party mates. Georgia didn't fuck around. Instead of bringing their guy to justice, they covered for him, black listed the girl's whole party. Suddenly, Impervious, one of the most productive teams of ass kickers I ever met in the settlement were out. Nobody buy from them, nobody sell to them, that sort of thing." Alexander told the story, which was connected to his point.

"They exiled six of the best humans in the whole goddamned place, because they were more concerned with the pecking order than justice. Then, of course, you know what happened later, after we cleared their farmed dungeons on our way out. Well, that changed things. Just because nobody that had a part in that decision, or carrying it out survived, doesn't mean we forgot. We rule the settlement by committee, with an elected mayor. No rule of the strongest, we keep things democratic, like the good old days. And the Adventurer Parties, they don't really have any direct say in city affairs, they all work on contracts, hired jobs with specific provisions for scope and scale and rules of engagement. We keep our Contract lawyers busy to make sure everything stays well regulated. Raw power's tempting, I'm surprised how well things operate here, given how much stock gets put in personal strength within the Guild Hall." Alexander told the attentive Peacekeeper giantess.

She looked around at her comrades, their white cloaks symbolizing a pure purpose, the knots of rank their status within the guild, the metallic strips in armbands denoting their individual skill level. Things were pretty clear in the Peacekeepers, people moved up and down in the structure, the cream naturally rising toward the top under the stiff competition.

"I understand that. It's not so different here though, we have squads that operate semi independent, those get their orders from the Captains by committee. Decision making happens according to votes, there's not many times when a dispute arises that it doesn't get settled by discussion." Grace told him, before a thoughtful addition explained why there weren't more problems, "Anybody that thinks they don't have to keep to the rules, who wants to get out of line, well, they get to take it up with Samantha. Either they get a clue, or she drops the hammer and they're gone. Mostly not under their own power when we show them the curb."

He saw the meaning. A council of equals. Up to a point. And beyond that there be dragons seeing things stay orderly. That worked, so long as the dragon was a benevolent tyrant.

Marvin rejoined them, setting down his tray, a brewski to accompany it.

Grace raised an eyebrow, "Drinking on the job?"

He responded by scratching his forehead with his middle finger, "Just the one, and you could do with the same. I can hear you winding too tight. We're on house duty, there's no sense staying high strung, not when runners could bring news that has us mobilizing whenever or not at all. You stay high alert like that you'll end up like Alexander over here."

Alexander took, well, not offense, but he did ask, "What's that supposed to mean?"

Neither deigned to answer, but Grace did bow to her senior's wisdom, "Good point Marv. SERVICE! TWO DARKS!", shouting that last to be heard easily above the din of the cafeteria.

"These pipes are useful sometimes." She admitted.

Was he really that bad? Alexander wondered. When was the last time he'd completely, totally relaxed? Approximately the day before he'd left Falcon's Rest, probably. Maybe he was forgetting how to. Actually, he now that he thought about it, he was exhibiting some of the patterns of behavior from when he'd first been led away from his hometown to Safe Harbor by Getsome, after eight months of total isolation in the post apocalypse of the Pulse. Green sense, PTSD it was called in the old world, but hyperawareness and constant readiness to respond to threats. Brigitte O'Connor had helped bring him down from his twitchiness by riding him unconscious. She had a big heart like that. No such luck here, his Brig was a thousand miles away, and Granny with her, and Durian. A midafternoon beer would have to suffice.

"So, what's on the docket for the afternoon?" Alexander asked, diverting the conversation to more productive avenues, hoping it wasn't more combat training, he was tired of watching people do things poorly, it was like watching junior varsity high school sports.

Pointless, when they didn't even have the basics down. Helping some of them made him think of a teacher dealing with a student asking for help on a problem without reading the question first.

A one knot armored knight delivered crocks full of the bitter and departed without words, the man seemingly unbothered by playing busboy, despite his beard and scars. The military had done it back in the day, giving people duties that reminded them that their job was to follow orders and keep discipline, no matter what. It instilled character. It also weeded out the glory chasers, the narcissists that would become problematic later if not identified. Subtle stuff, he had to hand it to the Guild, they had guard rails up to prevent a Safe Harbor.

One finger raised, Grace drank deep from hers, half emptying it, before she answered.

"Well, let's see. Combat training is done, normally there'd be a patrol duty afterward, but that's nixed because of the sweep, don't want to have to coordinate between patrol teams and the fire line teams, it's easier to let them finish. What do you think Marvin?" She eventually deferred.

Marvin slurped his soup one more time and said, "My vote? Go see the quartermaster. I watched our guest sew his gear back together the other day. That was before he got spiderwebbed. Maybe we can do better than some patchwork. I need a new helmet anyway."

Alexander brightened visibly at that suggestion. Quartermasters meant he'd get a closer look at the gear he'd been so impressed with. It was uniformly designed but individually fitted, showed a high degree of sophistication. If he got to meet the mind behind that armor, he'd consider today a reward for how awful the one before had been.

Together they rose, he finished off his brewski, and they departed, two red cloaked officers with their visiting ambassador from the north in tow. Around the ambulatory they strode, from the south side, past the crossing, which was logjammed with runners and scouts reporting from the fire line sweepers, and on around, bypassing along the way the conference room headquarters where the brass made their decisions to shape the future of New Chicago and the greater Midwest. The quartermaster, and the armory, was located at the north transept, and the entryway under guard by a pair of Sergeants. They saluted their officers and opened the way into paradise.

Like a kid in a candy store, Alexander Gerifalte peeled his eyes on no fewer than four active forges, their smiths actively working the craft at various stages. One was somewhere near the beginning, hammering out a billet, the bright yellow-white announcing a high working temperature as the thick biceps and bull shoulders of the man pounded, sending high clear notes into the din of the room along with golden sparks. Other smiths were hard at work, laboring through grinding of pieces to fit up, hand sanding for final finish, sharpening, handle making, riveting buckles, a dozen men and women labored to outfit their combat classed brethren.

The armory was soundproofed, isolating the surrounding cathedral from this racket, or the acoustics of the hall would have been full of this beautiful cacophony, it had to be. He felt, finally, at home.

Black smithing was the first thing Alexander had learned following the Pulse. Before he'd even Matriculated, with a Normal's body, a seventeen year old fresh off the loss of everything and everyone he'd ever known. He'd taught himself to work steel, to fashion implements to keep himself alive, to reclaim some pale remnant of civilization. Eventually, he'd made a steam engine, Stirling, to mate to a machine shop power hammer, George. With those, he'd made most of what he needed to achieve some approximation of comforts. Other skills had come, basic agriculture, leatherworking, sewing, how to make nitrate beds, simple alchemy, all painstakingly researched, proficiency, if not mastery, achieved through trial and error, through relentless diligence. Smithing, metallurgy, though, was his first love in the arts of making.

"My Precious…" he muttered as he was shuffled on past a big horned anvil that sat temporarily unused.

"Keep an eye on him Marv, I knows a runner when I sees one." Grace Miller noted, not missing the footsteps that kept trying to deviate toward the craftsmen.

He could slip them both whenever he wanted. Everybody who knew about Broken Silhouette thought they could just, somehow, pay attention harder and see through it. That wasn't how it functioned. He'd be gone before they figured out that he'd vanished. Not yet though, he didn't play his trumps until he was going for the win, just like he didn't raise pocket bullets. Let them think they were winning, then the knife, when they were most vulnerable.

The quartermaster, a medium height Brigid man, dark skinned but Alexander was pretty certain he was Indian or Nepalese or something, not African descent and different facial bones to the middle east, whose class, like some kind of freakishly effective tailor, let him fit a person's worn equipment to them better than their own skin. That solved the mystery of how crazy good the smiths were. They actually just made one size of armor each archetype of Adventurer, scouts/flankers, main attackers, Anchors, flex attackers or off tanks, and mages, it was this fitter, this uber-tailor that did the final fit up. Buckles shortened, chain coats trimmed, the spare rings falling to the floor for recycling. Metal plates shaped themselves to match the wearer, under the skilled hands of the quartermaster.

Alexander was immediately covetous. This man was worth his weight, no, twice his weight in gold. Or, rather, platinum since that was actually a supremely useful metal. A chewed lip, a glance at the Ultimet of his Messer. Okay, not worth the weight of that stuff, but certainly the Golem High Steel and Argentum his smithy forged down from the golems that occasionally wondered out from the old silver mine behind Falcon's Rest.

"And you think I'm the cheater?" He accused his escorts, after the quartermaster had measured him for a flanker's suit of mail and scale light armor, the unfamiliar equipment nevertheless painted onto his body within minutes. A week of work for him.

Marvin shook his head, sending ruffles through the crest on his helmet to check the fit. He didn't know why he did that, it was always perfect, but, back in the days before Donothan had taken over the quartermaster position, it was good to be certain your helmet didn't slip and cover your eyes in the middle of a life and death battle.

"Well, we aren't the big game in town for nothing. Thanks again Don, you're a magician." The cryomancer praised his comrade in the support department, who gave the old Rosie the Riveter salute, hand over his bicep and called, "You know it!"

Alexander couldn't help but run his hands over the unfamiliar plates, buckles, and creases of the Peacekeeper style light cuirass and limb protectors. He wasn't certain what he thought about the couter, or elbow guards. They didn't obstruct his motions, but he wasn't used to them. Unlike his old armor, armor he had made himself, with the aid of his fellows back home, there was more use of treated leather than the thin Golem High steel of his own designs. That made sense, given the recipe he'd traded for from Horace yesterday evening. Horace's treatment somehow injected a carbon fiber kind of strength into the leather's make up, vastly improving its durability, while a surface "wax" made it impervious to water and highly blade resistant. Begrudging admiration for this Peacekeeper style protective was dragged kicking and screaming from his hometown loyalty.

"What's got you down Ranger?" Marvin asked, "A second ago I thought it was Christmas come early, now your face's longer than Grace's dance partner wait list."

His hands continued to investigate the nooks, and crannies of the light armor, committing it to memory for later. Warforger was his collection of crafting traits. Through combining blacksmith and silversmith subcategories, he'd earned armourer, a more expansive trait, courtesy of all the fine detail that was needed to make gauntlets, fittings for armors, helmets, and the like. It was difficult, precise smithing that demanded near perfection from the maker, and he and Kim Summers, once a machinist, turned Runic Artificer, had crossed the threshold to earn their advancements together one night.

Kim had been murdered, just a little bit later, that was the last evening Alexander got to spend in his company, the celebration dinner the last time he got to raise glasses with the man who had become his friend. There was something of a homage to Kim in his forge work now, a kind of honoring of the departed friend through his improving skill.

As such, Alexander would take what knowledge he could from this outfit, and pass it along to the men and women who shared his workshop in Falcon's Rest. They would sit down with him and, together, they were going to come up with improvements to this design. Masterwork wasn't perfection, he was certain that there was room to do better, if only by small percentages.

Marvin's question he answered after a few more moments of focused examination, "Nothing, just concentrating. That, and I'm going to have to redesign my armor now. Going to be a shit load of long days in the shop before we get it right, too, now that I see how Horace's magic goop works in vivo. We'll have to start prioritizing the leatherworks now, too, we can do better on using monster leathers as more than backings, ties, or whatever. We're talking a shitload of work. Paradigm shifts are always a pain in the ass."

Using thin membranes treated leathers, or even super flax, layered with fine wires of metals, a mesh of wire since they were getting pretty good at drawing fine gauges of even the hard to work stuff, like Golem High steel, or mithril if only they could distract that godsdamned golem long enough to extract it, he was confident he could get the combination of lightness and flexibility to make composite materials that would beat the ever loving shit out of plate armor. It was just a concept though, he'd probably spend months trying to get a prototype worked up.

A wooden crash obliterated his concentration on the new material type, Mason, the ginger Ifrit Captain was standing in the door and he looked worried.

"Red Cloaks in the headquarters! Got a Loremaster hit, they sent the dispatch in a black envelope! I glanced over it on the way back from Governor Bastian's tower and it's a kick in the balls. C'mon, we're earning pay today." The red-haired man declared.

Marvin and Grace swapped grim looks and he nodded her way. Alexander was going to ask what that was supposed to mean when Grace Miller scooped him up in a princess carry, like a farm strong aunt grabbing up her ten year old nephew.

"Hey!" He cried, startled at the man handling, but they were off at speed and he figured out quickly that he wouldn't have been keeping up with the running red cloaks.

Whatever mild embarrassment he might have felt about being packed around like a child was small potatoes to whatever a black envelope meant, and he was deposited in a chair inside the conference room soon enough. None of the attending Peacekeeper's, red cloak or not, paid him the first mind, and he grew truly worried. Not one word for a grown man slung around? Not even a smirk? They might be fucked.

"We might be fucked." Mason announced, standing in the oration deck of the conference hall, and he waved the black enveloped to emphasize his declaration.

He opened the envelope and pulled the sturdy vellum pages out, then proceeded to read the words scribed therein verbatim.

Highest Priority!! April 17 2030-- Confidential Do Not Share With Unauthorized Personnel in the Interest of Preserving Public Order and Avoiding Incitement of Panic!

Loremaster Eugene McMaster, Feyfolk Blood Reader attests these following words to be true, under pain of execution:

Samples of blood provided from the monstrous entity identified as Infiltrator Eximius, as well as Scrolls of this beast and its partner creature Slayer Eximius provided by Envoy Alexander Gerifalte, Entropic Venator of Falcon's Rest, compelled a direct investigation of dungeon spawn corpses by this Loremaster. Upon examination of the contents of the blood of these creatures, and the core of the Slayer retrieved from hazardous material in the wake of its destruction, it was learned that the Eximius is a horde type dungeon spawn native to Rasatala. Multiple related variants occupy a hive structure, specific variants fulfilling specific roles within the super organism that is an Eximius Hive. Blood readings revealed that central to Eximius Hives is the Eximius Queen, now a tier five dungeon beast that possesses the ability to crystallize mana of realms it invades into Rasatala Dungeon Cores, provided these can be fed sufficient volumes of mana to quicken to full actualization of dungeon spaces.

Origin is traced to the Rasatala corrupted territory that consumed Denver during first breaks in Spring 2028, likely a liberated Guardian dungeon spawn freed from its host core.

The report from Captain Samantha Turing, Ranking Officer of the Peacekeepers Guild of New Chicago does so state that a near Realm distortion event did occur within the Guild Hall, only curtailed by immediate destruction of its Realm Shard by Envoy Gerifalte.

Loremaster Eugene McMaster attests here that there is a certainty for more Realm Shards to be in existence, representing potential for a sudden proliferation of Rasatala Contested Zones in the greater Midwest and New Chicago region. Demon spider mobilization into an active invasion phase may become likely if covert methods are deemed a failure. Exhaustion of magic potential in Infiltrator blood briefly connected the Loremaster to the mind of the Eximius Queen, its mind was Violence. Rage. Conquest. Prepare New Chicago and outlying settlements for likely assault.

Note: Loremaster has reason to believe a variant of this calamity called Puppeteer Eximius may possess captured lesser dungeon spawn, dominating their wills and employing them as fodder in direct confrontations. Expect unusual variety of dungeon spawn in initial waves of an invasion force.

Silence dominated the room, the full weight of the contents of the black envelope finding its purchase on the men and women of the room, those who shouldered the burden of protecting this city, and its surroundings from harm. Some of them appeared to have been in shock.

Ice shards surrounded Marvin Pruitt, his class manifesting its control over his emotions, granting him a supernatural calm from which to state, "Senior officer standing. Motion to vote to put out a general call to arms. Every settlement between Des Moines and Cleveland, as far south as New Ozarks, or Little Rock, if you want to use the old name. Every able-bodied combat class, every Matriculated that has combat adjacent potential, every support craftsman to be mustered for a common defense force. Either we crush this or it crushes us."

"Seconded," Called Grace, absent a shred of humor, "Captain Turing is purging the surroundings with Captains Yu, Henry, and Dillingham. That mission would have been part of our first response, clearing the neighboring settlements of infestation. She should be notified, but we cannot wait for four of the twenty to begin our response."

"Motion carried," the Dryad named Siddiqa announced, "Let's do this. Vote to enact general call to arms under the Peacekeeper charter, invoking the extinction clause, aye to formally request all able bodied Matriculated, nay to seek alternatives to the extinction clause."

"Ayes" rang out, unanimous, without hesitation from the warrior Guild leaders, each of whom understood the threat posed by dungeons opening from hidden cores scattered throughout the countryside, fed by the cores of the people who lived in the surrounding region. Especially if those people were being culled by a monstrous army of dungeon spawn controlled by a Hive mind led by a tier five demon spider.

"I didn't see this one coming." Alexander mumbled, numb from the sudden largeness of the crisis he'd fallen into.