Pathbreakers: Multiclassing For Fun And Profit

6/20

San Francisco, California

8:55 PM

One of the perks of my Masked ability is being able to immediately switch to clothes that aren't damaged and covered with my brother's blood. My un-installed right arm goes into my inventory. I emerge from the dungeon and immediately get a phone call. It's Jose.

Jose: Looks like it didn't go well.

Me: What makes you think- ah, of course. You didn't leave, you just got into a sniping position across the street or something. I'm fine. Tell Mercy I'm fine.

(mumbling and yelling)

Jose: Good luck with that. I have a trace on him.

Me: What kind of trace?

Jose: The kind of trace you get from the Seer class.

Me: Oh you finally picked a path to a 5th step class, eh?

Jose: Yeah, I'm going for Visionary. Seems like a better fit than Stylist.

Me: Okay, if you- Mercy, wait, it's fine!

She's in her mecha outfit and flies over to me at high speed. “Hang up and explain! And where is your arm?” Mercy looks pissed.

I try to be calm and reassuring. “The arm is in inventory, and Biscuits can reattach it later. And if I hang up I'll have to explain to Jose separately and I don't like repeating myself.”

She does not look reassured. “Jose, I'll call you back,” I say, and hang up.

“I already sent for a Lyft,” she says.

“Well, we really don't have time, I was just going to run to the airport.”

“Run? With one arm missing?” She's still pissed.

“It's not bleeding anymore, I fixed it.”

“THIS DOES NOT LOOK FIXED, JUN.”

This continues for the duration of the Lyft ride, so I tip generously and leave a five star review. Hakeem sure earned that one.

Mercy remains pissed for half of the ten hour flight to Baltimore, Maryland, which is quite an accomplishment. I don't know anyone else who can be that mad for that long.

Also, turns out she's mad because she knew she should have gone with me. And because she loves me and hates seeing me hurt. And because anything strong enough to rip my arm off is also strong enough to kill me. And she's mad because... because... because.

I vow not to lose any more arms, and she, sitting to my left, finally falls asleep on my shoulder. The guy sitting to my right looks thoroughly annoyed. “Hey, at least you've got plenty of elbow room,” I say to him, pointing at where my arm should be. He harumpfs and turns away from me. It is not my fault he didn't bring noise canceling headphones on a plane trip. That's basic survival strategy, dude.

6/21

Over Washington D.C.

10:15 AM

Our flight comes towards DC and it's the first time I'm seeing the destruction in person. Half of Washington was turned into ruins, while the White House was turned into a castle and the Pentagon was converted into a 100 floor dungeon.

Wide swaths of the city are gone. Burned remains of office buildings dot the land. The north half of DC, where the poor people live, is battle scarred but not destroyed like the south side is. The Smithsonian buildings and monuments are all intact. Those had been converted into ruins, and therefore immune to damage. Those ruins got cleared over the course of the first month of the Dracosys, and now the national mall is back to normal, sort of.

The capitol building stands, but surrounded by troops. It turned into a 20 floor dungeon that we're here to break.

Arlington on the south side of the Potomac, however has fared far, far worse. Three square miles around the Pentagon dungeon is a wasteland that's been bombed into a brown and grey dust. Three square miles that used to be homes and businesses. Thousands of people died in the first dungeon break, as ghosts and demons poured out of the Pentagon for 100 hours straight. They've had to deploy tanks and jets to take out the stronger demons. The Pentagon itself became a demonic, satanic-esqe parody of what the wildest conspiracies thought of it. The dungeon goes down a hundred floors, and as we fly above it I can see the glowing orange flames from the hell pit that's now the center of the complex.

Even now, less than 100 hours from the weekly reset, troops are perched outside the Pentagon, waiting for anything or anyone to come into their lines of fire. Having been through a dungeon break now, I can only wish them good luck.

Our plane flies on, towards Baltimore. Baltimore itself has only been mildly touched by the Dracosys, earning itself one arena in the transformed Oriole Park at Camden Yards. The baseball stadium's sandy red brick and hunter green seating have been turned into a tree-shaped Dracosys “arena.” People can enter and fight monsters of various difficulties, though they don't accrue levels for the fights. They can get loot drops, and I'd heard the locals were already farming this place. The lowest difficulty monsters are apparently just regular birds, and shooting them for their gemstone item drops is making somebody rich, I'm sure.

But we're not here for that. We're here because DC's airport was vaporized in a demonic spell strike, so we have to fly into Baltimore and rent cars to get into DC. It's a surprisingly mundane workaround in a world now full of monsters and magic.

We grab a couple of rental cars and head south to DC. Mercy is my copilot for this trip, and she's got her laptop out and is perusing the Hak-Kun files.

“You want me to go over what we now know about the Dracosys?” she asks.

“Anything new, sure.”

“The Dracosys is a combination of Etheric Radiation and nanomachines from another dimension. They, well, whoever Spear Saint is, has some device that gives him access to a device that opens a hole to another dimension. Have you heard the analogy of the universal paper clips?”

“Uh, no?”

“It's an example of AI gone wrong. An AI is told to make paper clips, and it does so, and it's fine at first. Then it starts trying to be more efficient and expands its processes. It eventually takes over the planet, converting everything into paperclips. Then the AI starts converting the solar system, then the galaxy, then the entire universe into paperclips.”

“Sounds like a lot of paperclips.”

“That's not the point,” Mercy says. “My theory, and this is backed up by some of the conversations we uncovered, is that this other dimension Spear Saint tapped into is like a paperclip universe. An entire universe of nanomachines. Otherwise it's statistically impossible that opening a gate to another universe would get you a seemingly unending stream of nanomachines.”

“Ah, okay. So we contacted another dimension only to find an oops all nanomachines universe?”

“That's the theory, ” Mercy says as she mouses over to another window of notes.

I remember what I'd heard on NPR recently. “And the Etheric radiation that powers them is from cellular phones?” Having peerless Intelligence only helps you remember things you actually pay attention to.

“Technically it's the radiation byproduct of cell phones. Which of course means that particular wavelength of radiation is everywhere, especially in 1st world countries.”

Now in DC proper, I get off Interstate 50 for highway 395, which goes right past the Capitol building. “We still don't know how they're able to control the nanomachines and turn them into the Dracosys, right?”

“Mmm. Not really. The conversation logs mention a Controller, which is some sort of interface they have to add the game mechanics to all the nanomachines now floating around our planet.”

I sarcastically say, “ah, I just love being infected with nanomachines against my will.”

Mercy flicks my very well toned arm. “It's got some good points.” Then as we pass by the scorched and ravaged National Mall lawn, patrolled by dozens and dozens of troops, Mercy says, “though probably not enough good points.”

I pull off the highway and make for the Capitol building underground parking lot, which we have access to today. As we get out of the Toyota hybrid car, I spot the rest of the Pathbreakers. Today we're bringing our full force to bear. That includes:

Team Lupus Rex

Me, obviously. Class: Synergist, Astral Pathbreaker, and others.

Jose Amarillo. An unmatched sniper and specialist with electric attacks.

Classes: Crack Shot, Seer.

Mercy Mahar. She has several powerful costume transformations, including a Data-element spellcaster, a mecha armor valkyrie and a strong spear wielding oni.

Classes: Costume Witch, Hexer.

Quinton “Quins” Sheffield. An archer with exploding arrows. A brit. Also, I think he's pretty funny.

Class: Bomb Maker.

Capricorn “Cappy” Williams. Uses a SMG while being an aerial combat expert, ever since she got the double and triple jump abilities. Seriously, she can get 40 feet of air, no problem. She's 4'10” and has the lean muscle of an Olympic gymnast.

Class: Thief

Phoenix Team

Madeline Diaz. Close combat specialist with a flaming axe made of shifting cubes. She carries a medieval metal shield that's enchanted to repel damage and basically never break. (She traded for it with a British special forces guy who got it from a castle dungeon.)

Class: Cavalier.

Henry Gallup. Shotgun and grenade specialist. His class gives him wide aura effects that help reduce damage and even slowly heal us. The heal isn't enough to matter in a fight, but afterwards it can turn a slash into a small cut over an hour or so. He is annoyingly handsome.

Class: Representative.

Kailani Haku. A large Hawaiian woman who's gotten some good instant healing magic. Uses a standard rifle. She's a mom and gives off big mom vibes. She keeps her dark brown hair in long, thick braids.

Class: Cleric

Rutger Waltz. They're not military, and got trapped in a dungeon like Jose and I did. They're an offensive magician with some powerful but costly spells. Rutger is skinny/androgynous, has short black hair and wears the entire contents of a Hot Topic jewelry section. Not all of those earrings can be magic items, I'm sure.

Class: Sorcerer.

Scarlett Fletcher. She's Airforce, so she's tiny like all of them are. I'm pretty sure her red hair is dyed but I'm not 100% on it. Scarlett took the Caller class and got an actually useful pet, a falcon that shoots light-element lasers from its eyes. The falcon's name is Jeff.

Class: Caller.

Parker McCall. A regular-ass, almost 40 year old National Guard soldier with a regular-ass rifle. She's got some cool slide moves that let her glide across the ground. Her salt and pepper grey hair is in a military standard crew cut.

Class: Swashbuckler.

Biscuits J. Cannonball Jr, my familiar from the Caller class. I can now summon her from home and send her back when she's done her work. When she feels like it, she can heal almost any wound. Seriously, she restored Jose's leg and he lost that four years ago. Though she's still a cat so sometimes she just doesn't feel like helping. And she's basically defenseless, because she's still a kitten.

Right now I've summoned the orange cat so she can reattach my arm. She tilts her head at my stump and meows sadly. I scratch her head and between her wings. Then following the cuteness is an absolutely horrific scene of body horror that plays out as my flesh reconnects. Her body slightly glows as her magic does its work, and then I'm good as new. I pet her again and unsummon Biscuits and she's away in a puff of flame.

Parker, the only one who actually watched the disgusting magical healing, just nods and says, “that was pretty fuckin’ weird, dude.”

I nod in agreement. “Where were you deployed, Parker? Oh, and Parker or McCall?” With that attitude to gore she must have seen some shit.

“Parker's fine.” She's got a thick Boston accent. “And it was both, first Afghan, then Iraq. Whole fuckin’ middle east shot at me at one point ‘er other.”

I smile. “Damn. I only got shot at by a few of them.”

“Yeah, I heard. Though sounds like not many of the SOBs are still around.” She knows the story, I guess. The story does get me respect from fellow soldiers. So there’s that.

We get out of our respective vehicles and head to the main stairs of the Capitol building, getting through several checkpoints as we do. Most of us are in the dark blue Pathbreakers uniform. Jose's uniform is desert sand tan, mine is white, and Mercy is currently dressed like a fantasy anime wizard. I scowl at a Capitol guard who's checking out my girlfriend's thick thighs. Look man, I get it, but she's taken.

I greet the Capitol police chief, James Hyland, who's come to greet us and give us the rundown of what to expect.

“Pathbreakers?” he asks. He's got a red handlebar mustache but is otherwise clean shaven and bald. I have a hard time looking away from the bright red stache.

I nod my head. “Yeah, that's us. Regular dungeon delvers here to restore the Capitol to its former glory.”

“You're finally here. We've gotten to the 9th floor but nobody wants to hit floor 10. So our efforts have been mostly to stop the breaks and knock out foes in the first five floors.” He says floors with air quotes.

“We read the reports, but I want to hear your version,” I say. “Give us the lowdown.”