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

Healer Brenda's moratorium on Alexander's mission proved well-founded. Under the watchful patience of Captain Marvin Pruitt's attendance, his first attempt to walk to the privy ended with him in a heap by his bedside, his legs having folded when first they took his weight. Laying there, the patriarch of Clan Gerifalte, stalker of the Green and dungeon killing champion that he might be, considered his options. He could, of course, ask for help from the Marid Captain whose bearded visage watched with a sort of enlightened amusement, a comedic Buddha who knew that what would be would be with or without his interference. Alexander committed to starving to death on that very spot first. Next, he decided that he should see to what extent his leg muscles were still unresponsive and found with careful kneading of the different muscle groups that his thighs were mostly at fault.

Loud thuds of his fists against the meat of his quadriceps accompanied the return of function to those and he was able to, carefully, slowly, rise to stand. He'd forgotten in his occupation with getting his legs working again that the original purpose of his rise was to piss, and gingerly competed that task. He only barely avoided an embarrassing mess with his swaying. Then, lest somehow he raise the ire of Healer Brenda, who circled vulture like around the clinic and training platforms to force her attentions on those that might need them, he made intentional, measured steps back to bed.

"So, I'm revising my position on our pest problem." He told the Guildie officer, "It may well be that my prior role in actively hunting the creature might not be optimal. Just for a bit."

An acknowledging grunt was all he received in reply, which forced him to expand on his recent erudition.

"All I'm saying is, I might be able to be useful in a non-combat capacity, completely within the walls of this Guild Hall, as safe a place as might be found anywhere inside a thousand miles."

"Uh-huh." Marvin replied, still leaning back against the clinic wall on his stool, eyes closed now in gentle repose.

Thusly encouraged, Alexander explained that he had some experience in alchemy and could contribute to the demise of the enemy by joining forces with the alchemist who'd run off to study the Infiltrator venom, perhaps to create a vaccination or preventative remedy for dispersal to the men and women conducting the sweep.

"If you get out of that bed to do anything but produce waste, I'm going to let Brenda do whatever she wants to you. She's meaner than cat shit firstly, and this is her clinic, secondly." The older man informed him without moving, which put an end to that angle of attack.

"Can I, at least, have my pack so I can stitch it back together from that stupid spider's stabbing?" He asked, desperate for something, anything to do.

"I'll allow it." The Guildie Officer granted, unperturbed by his disquiet.

So did he pass the time in silence with a sail needle and stout waxed canvas thread, repairing the beloved pack to its raggedy glory. There had been other holes emerging that needed patching so he took the opportunity to handle that job as well. Then he used a quarter of a roll of wool thread, this time led by a finer needle and a darning egg from a pack pouch to darn his woolen socks, one of which had its toes out. By sacrificing some of the material from the calf high hem to re-toe it, he had a more or less intact set of crucial footwear. It wasn't the height of his craftsmanship but Alexander ran a decent stitch when he had to, only a careful study would show the patchwork.

Next, he took some time to look over his armor. The big slash through the side of the cuirass, the thin plates of Ur-steel cut not cleanly, meant he had to take a file he kept handy to remove the jagged bits so it wouldn't gouge him while he moved. Examining the damage to what he'd considered very fine light armor, he put "Armorbane Infusion" on his list of Skills to rank high on a threat assessment. It was akin to his entropic magic in that the creature's core used its mana to warp resistance to its attacks from anything that functioned as a physical protective layer. Magic that operated on a metaphysical layer like that made him extremely uncomfortable.

He grumbled while he plied the file. A full repair would have to wait until he was home. For now, he settled for a ready-made patch of boiled ox-hide that he cut to size with his Messer and sewed over the hole, using an awl and a small peen hammer from his repair kit to punch the holes. The leather wouldn't stop that bastard critter's spear legs directly, any more than the original plates had, but it would maybe prevent a glancing blow from envenomating him.

Sharpening his knife was a waste of time, Talon was always sharp. He decided that he hated this spider and all of its kind, cursing him to hours of useless bed rest. At this rate it would be the Phoenix sunrise that would come before the last of the venom's effects faded. This here, this would teach him not to let dungeon spawn people wearing arachnids stick you with their creeping, poison-soaked little claws. If he ever got that thing in Singer's sights he was going to give it a taste of his own medicine cabinet. It had poison resistance, but not immunity and Alexander didn't waste reagents on poisons that only sort of killed you. If it was worth doing, it was worth over doing when it came to the stuff he put on his arrowheads.

"Ah!" He said, striking his fist into a cupped hand with a loud *pop*.

"Got any piano wire around here?" He asked of the increasingly likeable Peacekeeper officer keeping him imprison-, ehem, looking out for his best interests, "Preferably some high-quality steel ones, bass notes, maybe a twenty-two gauge at the thinnest, grand pianos are closest to good if I can't draw and braid the wire myself. My bow string's a touch fatigued and I'm gonna need all the feet per second I can get if I get a shot picture."

Marvin eyed the rather fetching specimen of a bow propped up in the corner and told him "I'll see what I can do." before he rose from his stool and called a passing white cloak, sent her running a fetch quest. That done, the Peacekeeper returned to his stool and inquired drily, "Do you ever stop moving?"

"Mostly just when I've got a good ambush set up or I'm lining up a shot." He answered honestly.

Idle hands were not a problem in Alexander's life. He'd always been that way, it was a trait his parents had encouraged and nurtured, giving him hobbies galore, as well as accelerating his education through high school. They'd been the same way, always active, always inviting him to share their various passions. If they hadn't, he probably wouldn't have survived the first couple of weeks when the Pulse rolled everybody back to the stone age.

Piano wires, it turned out, were rather swiftly found and he whistled to himself, slowly increasing in octave as he found his spider poison weakened limbs were not sufficient to the task of restringing Singer. Marvin let him struggle for a few minutes and then wordlessly offered assistance.

Alexander sat back against pillows perspiring slightly with the effort when they were done. He'd been poisoned before. On several occasions, now he thought on it, and nothing had stuck to him so hard as the Infiltrator toxin. Brutal stuff.

Challenging that monster again without a countermeasure was foolhardy. One scratch and it could disengage to wait him out. He would know, that was one of his favored tactics for dealing with something too dangerous to risk directly confronting. Once the paralysis and hallucinations had him, he was finished. A real pickle. One he spent the next three hours contemplating, amongst other problems as he relived the brief encounter with the Infiltrator Eximius. Something about that name tickled his brain, but found no purchase and slid away as he considered countermeasures against a nimble, powerful, armored foe wielding anywhere from three to five spears at a time.

Dinner was brought by a Guildie orderly and he stuffed himself shamelessly. Putting weight back on was definitely to the good, he'd compromised his endurance by pushing so hard in the hopes of catching the killer. An extra ten pounds wouldn't make much difference in the dosage of otherworldly spider venom, but it couldn't hurt either.

Scraping of spoon on bowl declared the meal concluded just as the cloth doorway to the clinic room was pushed aside and the lovely face of Captain Miller towered above him once more. She frowned as she looked him over, blue eyes absorbing details as if a Marine drill instructor looking for even the pettiest uniform failure from a fresh boot. She nodded, as if he'd passed muster, barely, and pulled up a seat that protested her mass as she came to rest on it.

"Jeet? Yeah, suppose you did, glad somebody got to, I guess." The starving ogre-lady lamented, and he felt guilty for being in a bed while his hosts were skipping meals to deal with his contract, even though that was also their job.

He didn't have long to feel badly about it, the Oread lady wasn't blaming him, just lamenting her ill fortune and getting her fellow officer up to speed. Feeling like a moron for getting tagged by a new type monster was rookie shit and Alexander got his head out of his ass to pay attention to the debrief. A low ranking Guildy showed up with a steaming stew bowl and most of Captain Miller's debrief was performed around a mouthful of food, propriety be damned. Her mood visibly improved as her stomach filled.

"I think we're probably about as buttoned up as we can be here." She concluded, sighing when she set aside the mixing bowl on a shelf containing medical supplies, "Not that I think the asshole monster is going to risk breaking cover surrounded by Peacekeepers, and I'd just love to see it try the Guild Hall wards. Still, better safe than sorry. Mason an' Siddiqa are handling Guild Hall security, Tosh has all four eyes on the rookies over at the Greenhorn Corral, and Molly is interviewing the patrols that come back; nobody lies to a Djinn Mind Mirror so that takes care of that." The Nordic Oread shared, having wrapped up the new gate protocols and patrol patterns, to keep the mind reading spider from using information it might have crawled from a washout, acquaintance, or former member.

There were not a few of those, these people were serious. Everything he'd seen and heard spoke the same message: Peacekeepers took only the best, and trained hard enough that best was a moving bar. Without any real way to track every single person who'd ever come and gone it was good the brass had decided to be cautious. People went missing sometimes, it wasn't always related to things like the spider, but no sense being predictable. Some of his worries were allayed, things were about as tight as they could be, given the circumstances.

"Any sign of it in the city?" Alexander asked, feeling far better now than the half hour before, it was palpable that the last traces of infirmity were rapidly fading from his limbs.

She mumbled curses and told him what he'd expected: Nothing. That was fine, he hadn't expected much. He'd been given Healer Brenda's blessings to leave his soft, fluffy imprisonment after supper and itched to do so. Soon, he'd be out and that spider would find out that it wasn't just the monsters that went bump in the night.

"The grid search continued all day, but slower, we doubled the sizes of the groups. There's been some concern from guys who've been around that the dungeon spawn might be close to a tier up. It might be trying to accelerate its feeding, which is what got people's attention up north and caused them to reach out to Falcon's Rest for a troubleshooter. I agree with them, by the way." Captain Grace said, sounding tired.

Captain Marvin dipped his beard to his breastplate and gave a dejected, "Never rains around here, ya know?"

Alexander got the sudden impression of a buddy cop movie Danny Glover saying "I'm too old for this shit". Only, nobody was too old for this shit because the ones who actually were had turned to stone already six years ago. That didn't mean he didn't get where the man was coming from. Life nowadays could wear you down, especially when you had the job of dealing with dungeons and their get.

"Yeah. Tell me about it," Grace retorted, although her expression brightened a touch "But we got a couple, two, three pieces of good news."

An armored finger rose.

"First, Horace got a successful preventative for whatever the fuck was in that goop that had our pretty boy visitor limp as a noodle while going to Mars. You shoulda seen the guy Marv, he was over the moon. Was saying we ought to keep the damn spider alive to milk it, of all things. Not that we're going to, but that shit is, according to our resident expert, da bomb."

She jerked a thumb in his direction, still looking at the stool perched Marid who had sat still as a statue most of the time Alexander had spent recovering, and said "For some reason he wanted to wheel Darth Nimrod over here to help out. He goes 'You gotta gimme that kid so's I can pick his brain'. I don't know what good a monster hunter's going to be in that nerd cave, but that's what he said."

Alexander raised a hand again and received a roll of the giantess' hand to speak, as he did, he noticed Marvin was grinning, eyes closed, and appeared to be enjoying another of those jokes he didn't share with anybody.

"I can alchemy. Greater Analyze too. I'm not the best guy around, but I've got formal training with a damned good chemist who makes about anything Falcon's Rest needs, from refrigerants to explosives. I do some of the exploratory synthesis for the city, mostly metallurgy and magitech, thanks to my generally useful Traits and Skills, and a ton of time hitting the books, but Wynona Saki's the one who perfects all the protocols and does the theoretical work for the hard alchemy." He shared, which was why he'd volunteered to go help the chemist earlier.

He wasn't actually a chemist, not even close. But the tools he had at his disposal were not inconsequential and Saki had proven a terse, but effective tutor, if just to keep him from getting under foot while she did the hard stuff.

Grace Miller looked at him suspiciously and recalled aloud "I thought you were a smith in your off time."

He nodded his confirmation, her memory was correct, but he'd just never had a reason to talk about the rest of it so he shrugged and explained, "Technically, I'm a Warforger. It's a sort of catch all crafting trait, kind of a subclass, mostly for weapons, armor, or weaponized alchemy. My smithing skills are a subset of that, like my alchemy. Pops did a little of everything after he retired from working on nuke boat engines, and my mom was an ordnance specialist with the marines. I'd like to think it's a gift or a legacy from them. They got enshrined, so, maybe Gaia balanced the scales a little."

Blue eyes widened, incredulous, and she blurted, "And you're allowed out in the GREEN?! The fuck are you northerners thinking?"

He smiled sheepishly at that. He had, in fact, been constrained to stay mostly inside the walls of Safe Harbor when he'd contracted with the Guilds back in those days. Then again, when he and the original founders of Falcon's Rest had resettled the town. The loss of freedom had chafed, but it had been a necessity, so as not to lose his skills if he were to get killed before someone could replace him. After a year of steady effort after Falcon's Rest absorbed the survivors of the dungeon break that consumed Safe Harbor, he was no longer a bottleneck on the city and he could return to his real passion: Walking the Path. Or, that's what the voice that spoke to you when you slayed a dungeon heart called it, among other things.

Seeking the Dragon Pulse, Walking the Path, growing stronger and purging the infection from Gaia. Along the way he'd been told that the answer to the Enshrining could be found. Undoing the Pulse was his life's mission, making neat shit was just steps in that direction.

"There's better than me at pretty much everything in Falcon's Rest, by far. I'm turbo redundant, so now I get to do what I'm really good at, which is killing dungeons, their spawn, and people who break the Contract." He volunteered readily, happy to brag on his friends back home, gifted in their trades all.

Captain Marvin was laughing quietly now and knuckled a tear from his eye.

"Told you so. Captain Ecklund vibes all over." Was all he said, which Alexander assumed was a reference for his colleague because he'd never heard of any Ecklund before. He could guess though, the spirit of the thing and didn't mind. The world needed Ecklunds and Alexanders right now.

"Gonna have to update the Bingo books around Falcon's Rest." Muttered Grace, tugging on the bun that held her golden hair out of the way while she was on duty.

"Well, anyway, I guess the venom problem is sort of under control," The Oread Captain said, faintly exasperated, "Horace says the preventative dose is small and works for about ten hours, so he's cranking it out as fast as he can until he runs out of reagents."

Her good cheer returned, and the red cloaked officer raised a second armored finger next to the first, "Second! Governor Bastion was pretty on the ball when we shared our revelations regarding the nature of the threat. The old guy matched a description of the skin suit to a small-time itinerant game hunter that had disappeared for a couple of months last summer, who reappeared near autumn and closest folk to him said he'd gone strange in the head. So, we know that the bastard is without cover, temporarily, and we also know that it's probably going to show up wearing one of the people that went missing this week past. That limits who we're looking for and Bastion had leaflets of their faces already sketched out like he saw this coming, what a fucking man."

"Hot damn! Second District Gov works fast." Captain Marvin praised, and even Alexander breathed a little sigh of relief.

All the gods above, below, and in between bless a supremely competent bureaucrat. Opportunity sprang from adversity, the young hunter reckoned at this turn of events. Before the assassination attempt, he'd pretty much come against a dead end against the killer. By tilting its hand, it had given him the chance to acquire its Scroll and the Guild and the civil government something to work on.

They'd draw the noose around this fucker's neck and strangle it, unless it abandoned the city and fled to the wilds, where Alexander would have the advantage. His metabolic needs weren't as severe as the monster's, he could run it down, if necessary, just as he'd done chasing it to New Chicago. A third raised finger brought him from his murderous plotting.

"Third!" Captain Miller cried, clearly saving the best for last, "Representatives from the Otherkin clans came forward and offered assistance to the civil guard and the Peacekeepers, so there wasn't any friction when our guys cleared out south. A few of their resident martial types volunteered to deputize to contribute further to the cause, which Governor Bastion has some newsies doing Ra Ra pieces on to drum up good will between the Human and Otherkin around the city. 'Bout twenty Gnomes, fifteen Dwarves, a gaggle of half wild Elves, hell, we got six Dracul up in the Governor's tower collating intelligence."

"By tomorrow, New Chicago's citizenry will see a Otherkin out on the streets inside the wall, in uniform, publicly working hand in hand with the civil guard. It's a big deal." Summarized the ebullient Captain.

Damn, Alexander whispered to himself, that was big. Huge even. Maybe the dungeon spawn had thrown them a little rally point, a common enemy to unite behind. It was a bitter calculus, but the number of lives lost from the monster's feeding would be nothing compared to open war with the realm refugees.

"Seems like all we need to do now is find the fucker's lair and torch it then." He determined aloud, eager to get on that task.

"You can say that again!" Captain Pruitt seconded, animated past his calm demeanor.

"Hang on there, cowboys," Grace cautioned, "I know you're both ready to get some pay back, but there's still a lot of city to cover. The sweep is rotating teams out, we got our night crew taking over. Last runner I saw said the line should reach fifty-five, that's us, by the way, around midnight. If we keep that pace, we'll reach the midtown split around old interstate two ninety by noon tomorrow. They're making good time, but it's pretty much all hands on deck to do it. We're leaving the outer city bare ass to make this happen."

Harvesters, farmers, herders, those were the life blood of the city. It was a mark of how completely the guild was responding to the threat level of the monster that they were leaving those non-combat classes unattended.

"There's gotta be freelancer Adventurer parties around that can hire on to sheepdog the harvesters." Alexander commented.

Exactly no chance in hell that the Peacekeepers, who had built this majestic Guild Hall, had outfitted all its NCOs and officers in some of the finest gear Alexander had ever seen, and had as many folk in the training fields as he'd spied vying to make full ranks, didn't have deep coffers. They could splurge for pinch hitters to cover their usual patrols, manpower shouldn't be a problem.

"What say, Grace?" Captain Marvin asked from his stool, "Anybody field that one?"

She rolled her eyes at him, as if to say, "What do you think?", but answered without sarcasm, "Captain Two Sabers herself is overseeing outer city defense and organization of Adventurer party mercenary teams. If anybody can herd cats, its Samantha."

"Huh, guess that takes care of the outer city." Marvin Pruitt mused aloud, "Anything that wants to take a shot at the champ gets what it deserves."

Two sabers, so that would have been the rather small Marid he'd seen in the meeting. Funny, that was one of the only ones that hadn't said much and he hadn't gotten any sense that she'd been in the driver's seat. An ace in the hole? Or so assured in the ability of her subordinate warriors as to not feel the need to dictate to the rest of the guild leadership? By the faint awe in Grace's voice, and Marvin's, for that matter, por que no los dos?

"Welp!" Alexander decreed, slapping his thigh, "I think that's my cue to go get some. Antivenom has handled the poison, Doctor Brenda has stamped my walking papers, I've got a full belly, and if I stay in this bed any longer, I'm gonna start climbing the walls."

A carefully blank expression on the blond giant's face said she was less than enthusiastic about his plans. She was going to be disappointed if she tried to stop him. So far, he'd been polite, mostly because they'd been right about him not being ready to fight that monster while poisoned. Well, he was, now, and it would be less ready to fight him down a limb and with a big assed hole in its carapace. Now was the best time for him to catch up with his quarry.

Something in his expression must have revealed his train of thought because the Nordic woman traded glances with her Morgan Freemanesque compatriot and they both sighed at being drug out into the field with dark already coming on.

"It's getting late for somebody whose been going twelve hours already. Even our guys only do eight-hour shifts on patrol." Marvin noted.

"You two can stay here, you know? Rest up, catch up with the guys, have beer and all that." Alexander suggested, slightly resenting the fact that they were acting like he needed minders when he'd gotten along just fine before ever knowing what a Peacekeeper was.

"I see in the dark better than most owls. Move quieter too. I didn't say anything earlier, because it's a little rude, but you two sound like somebody threw a potato sack of sardine cans down a stairwell walking around." He observed, and they frowned somewhat at being found wanting compared to the Outsider Adventurer's standards.

"I'm gonna miss snuggle time, and it's your fault Grace, for roping me into this. Just to help some lone-wolf glutton for punishment get his adrenaline fix." Marvin announced, only half joking.

Wide eyed at the betrayal, she shot the older warrior an incredulous, "MY fault?! I said to leave him on the pavement. I goes, specifically, 'Just leave the jerkass behind so's he learns some manners'. You're the one that insisted we pack him back here and pump him full of drugs."

Marvin was ready for this inevitable accusation.

"In my defense," He stated smoothly, "I had just had my brains kicked in and wasn't thinking clearly. When you get some more seniority under your belt, you'll recognize when a commanding officer is giving orders while impaired."

"Since you clearly need more experience, I think we can all agree that you have to take responsibility and keep an eye on our guy while he tries to slaughter mutant freak monsters in the dark all night. I'm gonna get some shut eye with my old lady. Close calls, you know," He winked in Alexander's direction, mostly to put burs under his colleague's saddle

With that, Captain Pruitt rose to put his war axe in its belt harness, the long haft trailing behind him as he wrapped his crimson cloak around himself and pinned it through the silver brooch.

"Typical man. Just wants to find any excuse to grab some night cap ass and sleep in." Grace accused, not meaning it.

She too knew how it was for the partnered up when you flew too close to the sun on duty.

"Guilty." Marvin confirmed, nodding, "So you, the better, more dutiful, and ever burdened of the sexes can carry the cross in my place. It ain't fair, just the way it's always been. And while we're talking about a woman's lot in life, if I didn't know for a fact you can't cook to save your life, I'd have recommended you to the kitchens instead of getting your red cloak."

This last remark got him a middle finger reply and Captain Miller accepted her defeat.

"Don't do anything stupid, Ranger Alexander, and thanks for saving my ass. My better half, she'd be real cranky if I went and died on her." The older man clapped him on the shoulder with that parting and made for the door.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Fine. Sleep tight, dick hat." Grace told her more senior comrade's retreating back, whose expression changed not a whit, even in victory, until he'd turned around.

"Been a long day for everybody. No sense all of us losing sleep, you ought to take a few hours to get rested up, Captain, I got mine all afternoon." Alexander tried, but received only a shake of the gilded bun at his attempt to deflect her.

This Alexander took to mean that he was unable to completely shed his Peacekeeper escort, and that they weren't willing to let him do his job in peace. He was about to reiterate that he really did not need somebody rattling around behind him in plate armor. Sneaking generally worked better when you weren't dragging soda cans in a trash can behind you. Unfortunately, he was foiled again.

"Ranger Gerifalte, we're not going to let you run around scaring the shit out of anybody who happens to see some suspicious fucker out the corner of their eye and lobs crossbow bolts into the dark. One of them might get a lucky arrow into you and that looks bad on us, you being a representative of the northern settlements and all." Grace told him, brooking no argument on the matter.

He considered that briefly. Melinda complained that he Batman'd the party sometimes, vanishing before the conversation was completely over, when he misread that his part in it was done. Given that he was accidentally, habitually able to slip from some of the best scouts in Falcon's Rest, would these people be able to see through his Stalk or Broken Silhouette?

Frankly, it was unlikely he decided, after a moment's contemplation. Most frontline combat classes, a lot of what seemed to fill the roster of the Peacekeepers, wouldn't even know he was around. Even so, the cautious young man acknowledged, it was not impossible. Sometimes, thanks to the inclinations or transformative experiences, people's classes shifted in unexpected directions. He'd known a frontliner who used sound-based attacks who gained echolocation from fighting mostly blind in a dungeon where night never ended when that dungeon had been conquered. Others might gain refined senses or gifts to detect life forms nearby.

However, if there was one thing Alexander Gerifalte wasn't buying, it was that any of these folk could put a shot on him when he was trying not to be found. Bragging wasn't his style, but all the flankers of Falcon's Rest played a regular game of hide and go seek, with wood knives covered in an oily tar that stained skin for days to add to stakes. He'd gone home to his wives clean those nights for two years. As far as ninja shit went, he'd found none better. No sense saying that out loud, though, it was clear the Guildies had their hearts set on following him around. If push came to shove, he'd just pull a fade in the dark, apologize later.

Instead of dragging out a useless argument, he shrugged and said, "If that makes you guys feel better. We're going to be up late, but I don't plan on an all-nighter. Just going to see if I can get a read on where the blood trail leads, while the sign is fresh. Not that I think it'll leave such obvious spore pointing towards its den. It was too careful all the way here for anything like that."

Wounded animals ran for their dens. Before he'd gotten a look at the Infiltrator, he'd have said it would do exactly that. Afterward though, that Cogitation stat was too high, this fucker was the Einstein of mind sucking spiders. Where would Alexander go if he were running hurt from a damned determined tracker that had his scent? Not home. Not and risk losing his whole base of operations. No, back before its rebuilding, when he'd been alone against the monsters, he'd built caches around the ruined town. Safe houses. That's where it would go, a secondary hideout, probably one of many that could be abandoned if they were discovered with minimal loss.

"Anyway, time's a wasting, let's go already." Alexander told his determined to tag along Guildie officer companion.

Captain Miller settled her helmet over her bun adorned head and strapped it under her chin, with a reluctance that nearly made him chuckle. Losing her would be easy.

"If you're thinking of running off when we hit the city, think again." The red cloaked lady warrior told him, using the dark powers of telepathy most women he knew seemed to possess.

"Whaaat?" Alexander drawled, "We need to work on that paranoia, Captain."

Her answering snort was all she needed to speak her mind on that, and they set off, but not before he and she both got a dose of the preventative concoction from Horace, the Guildie alchemist. It was bitter, with a few tangy citrus notes, not unlike a rather medicinal sip of beer. Just a sip, and the faint tingling in his blood vessels probably meant it was working.

Through the somewhat heavy traffic of returning Guildies on shift change, Alexander got the full measure of the manpower the Peacekeepers guild had at hand, and it was a rather impressive number. Main strength of full-fledged members probably numbered close to three hundred, not counting the ones on the long patrols Grace had mentioned. Toss in the provisional or trainees and it shot up to somewhere between eight fifty and a thousand. That was a roughly one to thirty ratio of Guildies to civilians, which was a damned sight higher ratio than in most places. He was used to the northern cities, with their small, elite guilds and the far more prevalent independent Adventurer parties. Here is was the reverse, a consolidation of fighting power. Probably why they'd been so effective at knocking out the nearby dungeons.

Once they were across the bridge and into the loose collections of ruins, reconstructed low-walled villages, and more traditional open neighborhoods, the density of armored men and women in uniform thinned out. In silence, or, at least, without talking, he made like salmon returning to spawn for the alley where he'd been ambushed, pushing a light jog to cut the travel time down. On his own he'd have sprinted.

There, the church with its peaked belltower, its classical gothic construction loomed high. Alexander frowned when he saw the height that the Infiltrator had dropped from in its initial ambush. A drop like that and it had shrugged off the landing and gone on the offensive within mere moments.

He hated oversized bugs. They were amongst the most difficult of adversaries, their anatomy scaled up was superior to most mammalian life with its armor, its carapace, its fangs and frequent poisons. Most of them had the disadvantage of endurance, of fragility at the numerous joints. This one didn't so much, as his long chase and its unsettlingly well-developed Scroll indicated.

Into the alley they strode, and Alexander got another surprise, this one from his companion. There, along the brick wall of the narrow alley was the spot where Captain Miller had, despite the close quarters, struck at the creature. The raw power in her first swing had knocked a goodly sized hole in the church's ground floor, opening the dim interior up, where empty, musty pews sat dormant. On the opposite side of the alley had been her second stroke, and that was what got his attention for real. Instead of a hole in the bricks there was a slice along the brick façade. The masonry at the distal edge of her strike was slightly smoothed, glassy from sheer heat of friction produced by her great sword as it carved through the alley. It was one thing to read a thing from the Scroll, another thing to see it born out in reality.

"Remind me not to stand anywhere nearby when you start slinging that cleaver around." He commented to his escort.

"Same to you," Captain Grace returned, nodding appreciatively to his belt, "I saw that spider split its leg all the way down to its third elbow, or whatever the fuck it's called, on that silly sharp thing you've got."

"Talon's pretty fucking neat, huh?" He bragged on the Messer briefly, looking up where the creature made its escape, "I'm gonna have to leave you to hold the fort at ground level, the bastard climbed up and over, and I'm betting it never went ground level until it was all the way across this neighborhood." Alexander informed the Oread, who frowned because he was probably right.

She nodded, the crest of her helmet bobbing somewhat comically to exaggerate the motion, and warned "Yeah, that sounds good. Just don't fall off a roof and die, and don't try to ghost me. We're a team right now, and teams stick together."

That reminder shifted his perspective some, and he had to write off his not quite firm decision to head off on his own after the quarry. A team. He hadn't been on a team much these past few years, it was almost all solo work. But she was correct, you don't leave your teammates behind.

"Alright, alright, I got you Grace. While I'm doing my rooftop parkour, I'll yell so you can follow along however you can. If I find where it's holed up, I'll wait until you wake up the entire city running over in that armor." He relented, starting his climb.

"That's a good try, I'll admit, but you're going to have to work harder to get me naked, Ranger Alexander." She called up to him, and he nearly lost the three-finger grip in the mortar joint he was using to scale the church wall.

"Can it lady! I'm climbing over here!" He scowled down a moment at the face grinning out from her crested helmet, before refocusing on where to put his fingers and toes.

Climbing a sheer building was mostly a feat of body control, leg, and finger strength. For a tier three, it wasn't quite trivial, but, with a lot of practice, it wasn't the near impossible feat that it was for a Normal. Up he went, and, even though dark was settling over the lakeside city, he could see the dried blood, the yellow green ichor that had faded to a dull brown. Color change like that often meant that whatever alchemical potency, or mana bound power resided in the blood had seeped out of it. It smelled foul, like battery acid mixed with pineapple, and he knew he'd be able to follow that distinctive smell, even if he were blind.

Nimble hands found the steeply pitched edge of the steepled roof, and the hunter hauled himself up to crouch on the tiles. Nada. Not that he'd expected anything different, the beastie was in full retreat, last he'd seen. Blood marked the way, and Alexander Gerifalte followed dutifully. A few fifteen to twenty foot jumps and climbs, changing stories frequently, rolling on the descents to shed the momentum, carried him up and down the rooftop escape route of the Infiltrator.

Running rooftops was easier than doing canopy runs through the Maine woodland covered mountain sides, and he very nearly enjoyed the exercise. Half a mile, a partial back track, a big forty-foot gap jump that necessitated he sprint full out, making the grab with feet braced against the wall of the building, almost on finger tips, and then he was off again following the increasingly spotty gore of his wounded enemy. Fifteen minutes later, at the far edge of the dense, brick dominated neighborhood bordered by the church alley, and the blood trail vanished, so either the monster had healed, clotted, or found a way to stop the bleed otherwise.

"Blood's gone, Captain Grace, we're back to hoping it leaves tracks." He called down to the street from his easy crouched perch on a four-story apartment roof.

No answer.

"Grace? Captain? You there?" He asked, his voice loud in the darkness.

Without much in the way of exterior lighting at night, people tended to get inside and wait out the long hours post sunset. A city as big as New Chicago couldn't really afford to light itself the way a tighter, better planned, if Alexander might hold some conceit for his home, town could. Falcon's Rest had lanterns on every other street corner, so the dark was driven back compared to most places. Here, he was deep in the gloom of night, just the way he liked it. It would have been peaceful, if he weren't busy trailing a potential borderline tier four boogeyman. Tier four, that's where things got real fucking dicey.

After a minute of nothing but the brisk blow of what the locals called the hawk on his face, he called to the night again. Still nothing. Damn! Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?

Finally, after another couple of minutes of irritatingly giving away his position into the night, he heard the clank and clatter of steel on stone that must have been his ground floor escort catching up. Breathes gulping air made him look around for predators that honed in on sounds like that in the forest by instinct. No cougars here in the city though, fortunately. Eyes sharp no matter the light, he saw the tall woman bend over with a hand on a hamlet fence for support.

He'd run out of rooftop, this was the edge of the neighborhood, the surroundings having been taken by fire and never rebuilt. In fact, by the earthy tones of cowshit, he was pretty certain there was a pasture over yonder. No more blood, no more trail. There might be some sign on the soft, moist earth. Besides, the panting of his teammate was slightly concerning, so Alexander dropped off the roof to land beside her, his legs bending to absorb the fall, with years of practice at avoiding unnecessary noise. He was rewarded with only a soft leather plop on the concrete and no rustle in his well fitted, well secured gear. It felt good to do things right.

"Hey Grace!" He said to her shoulder, about to ask if she was okay before he was cutoff by a startled shriek from the Oread that made his ears ring and she almost bisected him with a warding sweep of her sword that he ducked before she realized the cowled figure that had apparated at her side soundlessly wasn't an assassin spider going for her jugular.

"JESUS TAPDANCING CHRIST YOU SCARED ME!" Yelled the giantess unnecessarily loudly, one hand on her errant claymore, the other uselessly over her mouth at having nearly killed her partner.

"Shhhhh! You'll wake the farmers!" He hissed, not adding that whatever was within a mile would probably know they were out here now.

"Fuck the fucking farmers!" She growled, "I almost split you thinking you were the goddamned spider. Don't just lurch out from the dark like that, ya knob!"

"I was calling my position though, just a minute ago, how didn't you know it was me?" He demanded, angry because she was angry.

"Because who the fuck drops off a four flat without a peep like some kinda fucking wereleopard?!" She answered, still recovering from the jump scare.

He was about to argue that point, finger raised in objection, when he realized that she was probably right on that one.

"I did try to tell you this is sort of what I do, didn't I?" He reminded his temporary coworker, not bothering to hide his frustration.

From on high she stared at the monster hunter and massaged her temples for a bit.

"Are you infuriating on purpose, or were you born this way?" She asked, finally.

"Pretty sure I don't know what you're talking about." He answered, actually confused.

Normally, he knew when he was trying to be an asshole. So far, if anyone asked, he'd been a paragon of patience and understanding with these people. Maybe it was a Midwestern thing. Or maybe he hadn't been clear when he explained what he did for a living. If you hunt monsters, you have to follow them. Following monsters meant moving as they did, which was very rarely convenient walkways that followed level ground through the burbs.

Resignation creeped into her voice and a cryptic, "Damn, he called it. Look, Ranger, Alexander, forget it. We'll call this one my bad."

That was as close to an apology as he was going to get, so he put it behind him. There was shit to do. By the return to normative breathing of the armored warrior, she appeared ready to resume the pursuit. So off they went. Slight indentations near where he'd returned to the ground marked where the dagger like legs of the spider made landfall, having dropped to the ground instead of crawled, which indicated that it had fled at as great a speed as it could muster. That it hadn't leapt outward from the building, when it could damned well harmlessly make a much greater fall, probably indicated that it was nursing its wound, unable to execute its full range of motion with his Messer inflicted slice from its carapace. These daggered footsteps he followed into the night through the cow pasture, avoiding easily the leavings of the bovine grass cutters. Several times the Guildie who had refused multiple times his offer to simply take the night off did not, marked by profanity to disturb the approaching eleventh bell.

All too soon, however, the deeper indentations of seven crawling legs at great speed faded, and Alexander knew they were about to lose it as it slowed to more deliberate strides through a dense pocket of hardwood forest, a for real patch of woods, aptly called Dan Ryan Woods that had miraculously survived the fires that had claimed most of old Chicago's structures. Beneath the boughs of that woodland, the tracks disappeared, probably because a spider could move as easily through the closely packed trees, with their mostly leafless branches, as across the ground. Slow to leaf, these old oaks had lent speed and safe travel to the Infiltrator.

"Damn. That's the game then." Alexander announced barely ten minutes later, as he came to a halt from the light jog at which he'd followed his prey's skittering footsteps.

A belt lantern, mostly hooded at his insistence, since flickering shadows made following the scant signs of the beasty's flight harder, illuminated only dimly the woods around Captain Miller's sagging form. She was just about pooped, near as he could figure. Good to know that even superhuman juggernauts got tired.

"All this way, and, what, it vanishes? Just like that?" She groused.

"Ayuh." He returned morosely in sympathy.

Alexander nodded, as he recalled how this hunt had gone ever since leaving Concord, lips compressed because this is how it felt most of a thousand miles across the eastern North American continent.

"It made the trees, slowed down, and like a fart in a hurricane, it's fucking gone. Bastard." He summarized.

Grace found herself unbuckling the helmet whose extended use was now profoundly aggravating the skin beneath her jaw. A vigorous rubbing of the afflicted tissue and she hooked the crested helm to her belt. No action tonight, in any sense of the word. Just a long walk home with not much to show for it.

"Well, that sucks." She philosophized.

"Ayuh." Alexander agreed more cheerfully, before bending over to pick up the one piece of exceptionally good news that marked the end of this night's hunt.

So good, in fact, that he was reinvigorated, he felt like he could keep going all night, even though that wasn't an option, given that the impressive Oread lass was out of gas.

"But it had to make a tough call, right here at the end." He said, and raised the discarded spider limb that had been mostly split and was wrapped tightly with webbing, the answer to how it had stopped its free running bleed.

Grace Miller, too tired to think just about, chewed a lip at the web shrouded trophy. She was a warrior, a soldier, not a scout or a wilderness guide. And damned if she wasn't hungry enough to eat her weight in belts, footsore, and just about spent.

"What's it mean?" She asked, hoping the Venator told her something to make all this worthwhile.

Alexander looked at the place where the limb had been pulled from where it joined the thorax. He smiled happily at it, then her before answering, growing more excited the whole while he did, "It means it can't heal the wound. We hurt it, permanently. No Phoenix sun for this asshole. It also means that we've got more of that wicked poison to work with, so more antivenom, with some bonus webbing that might be kind of nifty to study, even if we don't have much of it. And, lastly, it means we're close. This hasn't been touched by scavengers, not even a nibble. I'd judge it's been here less than an hour. I think we almost fucking nailed the thing, and I'm betting its original den is over there in that nature preserve where 'I-two ninety-four meets fifty-five, since it loves the forest so much. That's outside the New Chicago wall. A wall can't cross freely anymore, thanks to all the patrols and the lockdown. We got the fucker locked in with us now."

Captain Grace Miller, a decorated officer, one of the youngest to earn that honor, of the preeminent guild of the entire Midwest, stared with tired eyes at the near frenzied glee with which the visiting monster hunter uttered that last statement. She said the only thing that came to mind right now, at this moment, after a morning of searching across the city, a vicious morning brawl with a monstrous demon spider, a whole afternoon preparing with her comrades to face a potential face and memory stealing, core eating, verging tier four demon spider, and then spending her evening crossing the city again while having to wind her way trying in vain to follow the glimpses of a spooky black eyed hunter killer who made no sound when he crept up behind you from the dark after dropping from four-stories up: "There's something wrong with you."

An enthusiastic shake of the spider leg, barely seen in the gloom shadowed woods, and a cheerful "Ayuh!" from the dark were all she got in reply.

Tiredness in her tone she commented, "At least it's our type of wrong. Carry on trooper."

A long, chilly walk back toward the Guild Hall passed the midnight hours along the railroad bed that touched Dan Ryan Wood on its north side led them due Santa Claus, all the way to the canal that wrapped around Peacekeeper Notre Dame. Heavy steel tread on gravel beat martial time the entire way, a metronome that shaped Alexander's thoughts toward the ultra violence of taking his mark. He wouldn't fail a second time. Countermeasures were in place, even if it caught him flat footed, which it wouldn't. Soon, some troop of Guildies would come close enough to the monster's safe house to trigger a defensive attack. Soon, something would break loose. After a few hours of sleep and a meal, he'd be back out doing his part. He had, based on the map he'd briefly spied in the intelligence quarter of the Guild Hall and tonight's scout, an idea of where to start.

About half a mile northeast of Dan Ryan was a small park, one that had a big encircling lagoon prominent, called Marquette. The bugs coming off the lagoon, the swampy ground, it was a natural dissuader of passersby, and one of those modern style minimum security prisons that called themselves schools sat prominent on its south side, still intact, a CPR certification and one time golf course clubhouse on the north side, mostly destroyed, the two connected by a wide avenue. It was exactly the kind of place their Infiltrator might like to call home while it recuperated.

So preoccupied was he that a tapping on the articulating scale pauldrons on his shoulder was what brought him back to find that they were returned to the Guild Hall.

"Gaia to Alexander, do you read? Over." Captain Miller was calling from somewhere in the stratosphere.

Looking up at the Guildie he'd run ragged tonight he joked, "Getting a little interference from the clouds, say again? Over."

Lips pursed and Grace decided that the ribbing was warranted. She couldn't set herself up for the easy ones and not expect them to take the shot. She was sensitive, not thin skinned. And besides, things were a little different now, the Outsider had proven himself today. Yesterday. Whatever.

"I said, 'We're home, and I'm going to raid the kitchens, do you want to join?'" She asked for a second time, warring between hunger rage and an attempt to be friendly.

Alexander saluted sharply at sudden attention.

"Sir! Permit this one to take point! There may be traps." He was her loyal instrument, if it provided relief from the gnawing of one side of his stomach on the other.

"Yeah, yeah, knock it off, ya dingus, officers don't strictly fraternize." She bullshitted.

Comradery between the officers, NCOs, and ranking members of the guild was encouraged. Tight bonds between the Peacekeepers kept everybody looking out for everbody else. Besides, the pecking order was maintained on the sparring floor. Anybody that got out of line could have their attitude adjusted at a moment's notice. Only the junior trainees got excluded from the brotherhood, on account of many of them would washout, and wouldn't be around too long. She was just goofing on the new guy and seeing how long it took him to catch on.

"No worries, Captain, I'm a married man. Brig would probably hurt me. Granny would slow cook my guts while I watched. No wench, however supple or nubile, is worth betrayal's price." Alexander cracked wise, intentionally misconstruing her comment.

"As if!" The giantess laughed, "You're way too pretty. The pretty ones always break when I try to play with them."

That sounded like a challenge. Unfortunately, there were gauntlets he couldn't pick up.

"Not I, Captain, my lady Brig has rubberized my bones through her dark arts. Profane rituals I can't even describe aloud to the unbaptized. But it's true that I'm out of your league. A dish as rich as myself must have standards or be wasted on unrefined pallets, as pearls before swine." He asserted, and the roll of eyes and a an appreciatively muttered, "Cocky bastard." Told him outrageous shamelessness was his weapon against the Oread Guildie.

They marched across the moat bridge, reached the portcullis gate, and were ushered in by the substitute gatekeepers.

Within the grand architecture, the guild was not asleep, in spite of the late hour. It was probably two in the morning by this point, by his best estimate. Not an all-nighter, but late enough for anybody with any sense. Empty were the training arenas, but the kitchens, the large fireplaces and communal tables, these were full. So too was the strategic center, the guild's intelligence specialists were burning the midnight oil to stay as current with incoming reports from the advancing sweep as possible. Alexander got a few appreciative looks with his trophy, the web casted split arm of the enemy. He waved it at the rubberneckers and got a mix of cheers, thumbs up, and boos, from the guild loyalists.

"You shouldn't stir up the rabble, they'll get all competitive." Grace told him.

A knowing smirk on his face let the red cloaked woman know he was aware.

"Good, competition makes us stronger. I'd like to get some of the lads from Falcon's Rest down here to see you guys in action. It'd light a few fires under the right asses, give folk new ideas." Alexander noted, good humored but definitely serious.

"No shit?" Captain Miller asked, perking up at the idea of a little inter guild exchange, a pet project she'd been trying to find legs for herself, with limited interest from her guildmates.

It was true that an organization, no matter how well run, could do with fresh perspectives. Ossification of the leadership led to losses of creativity in the brass, it was a known problem with command structures. As a young member of the red cloaked officers, she was something of a breath of fresh air for the mostly older Peacekeepers. Not that anybody had more than the six years of experience to draw on, but age did still confer some degree of seniority. Even wisdom, sometimes.

"No shit. Why not?" He asked, rhetorically, sitting down with a heaping tray of food and a beer, liking the idea better the more he thought about it, "Just getting teams back and forth would be a field exercise worth doing to make sure sub bronze parties have their shit together, before they go a wondering through a field dungeon that teaches them otherwise."

Bronze wasn't just a metal alloy any more in common parlance. Adventurer parties got ranked according to their level of experience and overall prowess. He wasn't the one that came up with it, and he didn't know what geek ass nerd did. All he knew was that it was something from video games and Japanese comics, just like the term Adventurer. Why did the turbo nerds invent most of the lingo for Matriculated humans and their abilities? Probably because some degree of detachment from reality was an adaptive mental trait post Pulse. When surrounded by magical nonsense, who better ready to flourish than the whackos?

"Everybody knows you don't trust the greenhorn Irons, or Coppers into a bunny dungeon without at least a Silver half party to escort them." He reminded his newest battle buddy as she began to inhale her grub at alarming speed.

Guy could lose a hand reaching for the ketchup, he mused.

Falcon's Rest had only just begun adopting the party rank terminology, when common parlance to quickly evaluate teams had become necessary while talking to the other settlements. Personally, he'd have gone with something more military, less sad nerd, but nobody'd asked his opinion and he'd been told to shut up when he gave it anyway. Just goes to show, not always is wisdom received with gratitude.

From around a huge slice of sourdough bread slathered in gravy, Grace Miller gestured the other half of the slab at him, "We don' le' anyfing b'low silv 'n the dung'n."

Brain power sapped by the long day, it took him a second to figure out the garbled message, "We don't let anything below silver into the dungeon".

That was pretty conservative. Still, who was he to disagree? This crew seemed to know what they were doing. Iron, Copper, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Mithril, Orichalcum, those were the ranks as he knew them. All real metals, though the last two were more like affectations for some pretty radical alloys discovered pretty recently by mixing dungeon alloys with Gaian mana infused ores. Alexander and Saki's alloy wasn't on the ranking, it was too precious to use for badges of rank, dog tags with your name on them, mostly, carried somewhere on your body in case you got whacked on the job. The Peacekeepers had their ranks on their arms, sewn into the biceps of their uniforms.

Silver was considered minimum competency to take on tier two closed dungeons by the leadership of his home. Gold was standard. Platinum or better to set foot into a tier three dungeon of any kind. Nobody'd ever gone into a tier four dungeon and lived to tell the tale, so they were mostly hypothetical. Bastion of optimism that he was, Alexander was convinced that they existed, but that they were only found in second generation dungeons, the ones that sprung up in transfigured zones that had already broken once. He figured that it would take a bunch of veteran tier three's equivalent to Getsome, who carried a Mithril rank each.

Alexander's own Mithril tags sat snug beneath his clothes, even though he wasn't a part of any particular party officially. As a kind of pinch hitter for dungeon spawn with heavy Soak and otherwise magical fuckery that needed his special touch, he'd done rotations in most of the teams in Falcon's Rest at one point or another before his current gig hunting Contract Breakers and rogue fiends.

"Well, whatever, I'm just saying that it'd be good to get teams traveling abroad to get some cross training, besides the regulars that are hiring on as merchant caravan guards." He finished, and drained the mug.

Between the food, the long ass day, and the beer, he was rapidly approaching bed time. A drooping blond head still eating mostly by reflexive action was in the same boat.

"C'mon, Captain. It's time to hit the bunks." He said, rising and clapping a hand on the pauldron of the half asleep Guildie.

Captain Miller jerked to full alertness, and looked around sheepishly to see if she'd been caught sleep eating again. Nobody acknowledged her or glanced her way so she finished her beer and climbed to her feet. A slight wobble from the transition between sleep and waking, and she nodded her thanks to the dark-haired Hunter from Falcon's Rest.

"Thanks. It's been a lo-heyoooong, day." She said, yawning widely mid-way through.

A sympathetic yawn, his face doing that slack thing when you were trying not to mirror somebody else's but couldn't help it, and then they were both off toward the stair that led to guild quarters.

After a brief wave and salutation, they parted to their respective rooms. Alexander slept in his armor, more tired than he'd realized when at last he'd found himself alone. A knock on the door a couple of seconds later brought him up, cursing, and he found that he was being invited to breakfast. It was morning already, seventh bell to answer his question of what time it was. Since he didn't need to change, he splashed some cold water on his face and departed the borrowed room to rejoin the hunt.

"Day fifty." He said to himself.

"What?" Asked the Guildie runner who'd been tasked to wake him.

"Nothing, sister. Just thinking out loud."