Pathbreakers: Multiclassing For Fun And Profit

Part 3: True Monsters

Brian is the litRPG expert. I call him on the flight to Afghanistan.

“Brian, hey, what's up, it's Jun.” I talk in a very casual way despite being on a CIA aerial transport that will get us to our destination in 10 hours.

“Jun, hey man. I haven't seen you in forever. I know you guys got new jobs but we should still game. I'm itching to get back to the table.” Brian seems a bit sleepy but not annoyed at the early call. It's around 7 AM his time.

“Yeah, totally! I actually set up a gaming room in my new house but we haven't used it yet.”

“You got a house? Damn, dude, you've been busy.”

“Yeah, yeah, so anyway, I wanted to ask you about the litRPG stuff.”

“You mean reality, or the fictional variety?”

“Fictional. I wanted to ask about the uh, motivations of those characters. Like, what do they do once they're in system land?”

He pauses a few seconds before answering. “They mostly just get stronger. There's variations, of course. You've got stories that are about being in charge of people or organizations, stories about getting money and magic items, stories about getting a harem of boys and or girls, but really, all of them come down to power.”

The next part he says almost uncomfortably. “The protagonists usually have some existential threat that the system, or a multiverse, provides. But that's just an excuse. Those stories are power fantasies, straight up. The characters don't need more motivation than just I wanna be strong. And if I'm honest, a lot of the protagonists don't have goals or dreams beyond that.”

I think about that for what seems like several minutes. I was really hoping he'd have some magic answer to what I'm doing with my life.

I reluctantly say, “hey, sorry to bother you so early, I'll let you go.”

Before I hang up I hear, “Jun, you okay man?” and it stops me.

I breathe deeply before I respond. “Not really, even though everything is going well? I kinda walked into running a mercenary group and we have an office and we're making a crap load of money-”

“Dude, can you please hire me to do anything that isn't cake decoration?”

“Uh, maybe? I think we have an opening or two. Just look up the Pathbreakers website.”

He's silent for a minute and then says “your site looks like shit. I'll do your website stuff from now on. Us gays are great at websites.”

“What does being gay have to do with web-”

“But, anyways, to what you were saying, I feel you man. I know you've had mental health issues for a long time now, at least as long as I've known you.”

“You... Know about that?”

“Dude, us depressed people can pick each other out of a line up. Why do you think I asked you to game with me? Tabletop games are the best non-medical mental health treatment available. A steady, reliable reason to pretend to be someone else and also goof off with friends? It's like the perfect salve for anxiety and depression.”

I let that sink in. Brian was a much better friend than I'd ever given him credit for. He... Cares about me. He cared about me even before we became friends at the gaming table. What a guy.

Alicia gave me a “wrap it up” motion, so I say, “thanks, man, I really mean it. I'm heading into a tunnel but I'll probably call you tomorrow or the next day, if that's alright.”

“No problem, Jun. Stay safe in your tunnel.” And with that he clicked off.

The inside of the transport was astonishingly quiet. I'd had to go off in a corner, behind a big black storage container, to get some privacy for the call. I come back to the seating area where the team is.

“We're almost there,” Alicia says. She's changed into a skintight, grey, neoprene-ish sneaking suit. Her narrow shoulders and small frame take to it well. She's got black harness/rigging looping around her back, waist, thighs and armpits. In that rigging are four handguns and about a dozen pouches of various sizes. Her blonde bob haircut is swept into a light helmet. Her blue eyes dart over to me as she attaches a face mask around her neck, ready to be slid on.

“That armor or something?” I ask her, trying not to look at her provocative “combat gear.”

“It's probably tougher than what you've got,” she says, looking at my outfit in particular.

“And a hundred times more expensive,” Jose adds.

“How much this costs is a matter of national security,” she says confidently. She taps a button on her wrist and most of her outfit turns tan like the Afghan cave we're headed into. “But it's a lot.”

The rest of the team are already in our Pathbreakers gear. We grab guns and make last second checks. Bennet then gathers the six of us around a waist high container that has some documents and tablets on it.

“Ya finally givin’ us yer intel?” Quinns asks Alicia Bennet. “Or ya gonna hold out until af'er the dust is settled?”

She nods, then clicks a few times on a tablet. She shows it to us. “We used ground penetrating radar to get an idea of the dungeon layout, and... It's big.” The diagram shows a massive interconnected complex underground. “The first three levels down look like caves. After that the radar just shows a series of large boxes. Our experts tell me that they're probably metal.”

“So Cthulhu wanted to deflect radar?” Mercy asks, with a tone of sarcasm. “I guess he's been keeping up with technology.”

Alicia just scowls at Mercy. “The Dracosys is the problem. It often lets us have glimpses of the lower, or in this case upper, floors of a dungeon, only for the later areas to be completely impregnable.”

“All lending more credence to the theory that it's of human make,” I say.

Dominic Franco says, “I don't care who made it. We just gotta crush that son of a bitch dungeon and take a shit on its remains.”

We all turn and look at him after that disgusting statement. “Too much?” he asks.

We all nod and agree that he needs to tone it down.

Alicia goes through the rest of her data and documents. It's not a lot. There's a temple being built outside of the dungeon. Humans have been seen going into the dungeon but rarely coming out. The dungeon is 15 floors. The floors are grouped in sets of three.

The monsters that come out during a dungeon break don't mindlessly attack like most do. Instead, they seem to talk to the locals and are open to deals. And in at least one case, that trade was for a goddamn nuclear bomb.

Also, everyone who's gone inside is probably still alive. Dungeons spit out corpses (as long as the people came in through the front door). So we know there's around a hundred humans inside doing... Something.

“We expect radioactive material inside, based on the Uranium mined there previously.” Alicia hands out a small tin to each of us. She opens her own and shows us six white pills. “Each one of these will protect you from radiation for six hours. It's okay to overlap a bit on the timing.” She motions to us to each take a pill and we do. I have to grab my bottle of water to take mine. “I'll time them and remind everyone when it's time for another.”

“So how much does the Rad-X cost?” Jose asks. I smile at his use of the term for an equivalent item in the Fallout series.

“Each rad sponge pill is around 30,000 dollars,” Alicia says with nonchalance.

Franco and I both do spit takes with our water. Mercy speaks for all of us when she asks, “So we just swallowed 180,000 dollars?”

“I'll tell you a secret,” Alicia fake whispers. “The CIA doesn't have a budget.”

Jose asks, “what's the timing on the dungeon reset?”

Alicia checks her watch. “I timed our trip so it just happened now. We'll have about 24 hours because we should arrive in-”

The pilot comes over the PA system. “Hitting target zone in 5, landing in 7.” We all suddenly get serious.

I head over to a window and take in the dark desert. The desert at night is wonderful. No city lights to outshine the stars. Moonlight slides over rock formations, painting them soft and cool. I take in the sky because it might be a while before I see it again. Up to about 36 hours. So, just as long as last time.

But things are different now. I'm different now. I'm not fighting to scrape out a narrow escape. This time I'm fighting to shut down a terrorist organization's nuke factory. And that immediate goal is all I need to think about right now.

Then, 2 minutes from landing, the aircraft begins to take fire.

A three-foot, yellow bone spike punches through the floor just inches away from Franco's foot. The air seal is broken and wind whips around the hole in the floor. We hear the whoosh of air rushing past us and the roar of the engines. The sound feels almost deafening compared to the previous near silence.

Jose and I are first to act and have the same general idea. We both go to the side sliding door of the transport. I pull a lever to unlock it and slide it ajar. Jose has already used a big carabiner to hook himself to a winch arm. He slides himself partially out of the craft, rifle first. I see him aiming down and he fires three times. He waits two seconds, fires again, waits another second, then pulls himself back in. I shut the door and he unhooks himself.

“Hostile, uh, monster, cleared,” he says, as if nothing alarming just happened at all.

“Body type?” I ask.

“Black sea anemone but teeth instead of wiggly tendrils. There were three of them.” Jose holds his hand over the rifle, golden light glows around the clip, and it's reloaded. The entire process, from taking fire to reloading, probably took 15 seconds.

The others look at us like we did something out of the ordinary. I ignore them and hit the button on the wall for the PA system. “LZ should be clear now.”

“Roger,” comes the pilot's quick reply. “Landing in 30 seconds.”

We gather around the side door again. A few short seconds later we feel a surprisingly soft touchdown and I slide the door open. The team exits and I slide it shut behind us, then slap the side of the craft to let the pilot know we're good. She takes off immediately.

The swirling dust and sand. The sound of propellers. This damn cave. I see it as it was back then. Daytime, blindingly bright. Blood. Death. So much killing. I snap myself out of the trance and move forward as the dust settles around us. My team is already sweeping the temple for any remaining hostiles. We find none.

The massive black stones making up the star shaped temple seem impossible. Each is a perfect, and I mean perfect, rectangle. Each block is about as tall as Mercy (so five feet) and twice as long. And they are positively flawless. Moonlight reflects off the glossy stone. Marble? No, there's no pattern, just black.

The temple is very incomplete. We stride up partial stairs and enter through the frame of a doorway comprised of more rectangular stones. These are smaller, but otherwise identical. I touch one with a gloved hand and feel an unearthly cold from it. A deep, inner cold, like the center of the thing is frozen, and the outside just radiates that chill. It's... Unsettling.

The corpses of the creatures Jose killed are close to the cave entrance. Each is, or was, about 10 feet tall and five feet wide.

Elder Thing, Sentry. Tier 2. This creature is really, really old. You could've learned a lot from it if you had bothered to ask. But no, you're the “shoot first, ask questions never” type. Pft. Philistine.

Possible Loot: Ancient Texts

I prod the Thing until it fades and drops its loot, an old book. I hand it to Mercy without looking it over, and she makes it disappear into her inventory.

Mercy helpfully says, “as a reminder, we are dealing with Mythos stuff so don't read anything you find, regardless of the language. I did bring a bag in my inventory for books, so if you see any forbidden tomes, please grab them and hand them to me, okay?” She's the Lovecraft expert of our group, so we're taking any of her advice to heart.

We come to the cave opening and I stop. It's well lit inside. The tunnel entrance looks the same as it did four years ago. The long string of lights hanging from the ceiling. The exploded boulder we huddled behind. The bullet holes in the wall. All the same.

I stride forward, and slide my left hand over my left set of wakizashis. Each of the long knives slides out of its sheath and into the air, then the five blades point forward and form a circle in front of me. I step into the cave and am immediately frozen.

Notice! You have been given the quest “Thank You, Come Again!”

Notice! You have been given the quest “24 Hour Lock Down.”

I come out of the freeze as soon as I read the messages. I turn to see my team wary and with weapons raised. “I got quests,” I say with utter bewilderment.

Jose steps forward next to me and freezes too, then unfreezes a second later. The rest of the team follows suit. Franco and Quins are last to unfreeze, having to pick classes.

While they do, Jose, Mercy and Alicia are on watch so I look at my menus. There's a new main menu option, predictably named, “Quests.”

Current Quests:

Thank You, Come Again!

You have entered a Dracosys site which you previously fought in, but failed to collect your experience from, for some unknown reason. The experience points earned are now in the form of a piece of naan located in the 15th floor boss room. Eat that naan and you will recover the lost experience.

24 Hour Lock Down

This dungeon has a curse on it, preventing anyone from leaving within 24 hours of their entry into the dungeon. Survive for the entire time OR clear the dungeon within that time frame for various rewards.

I announce to the group, “the 24 Hour quest is straightforward. Clear the dungeon or wait it out. We just can't get evac until then. Did anyone else get Thank You, Come Again?”

Jose nods. “Yeah and I can bet you know why.”

“What's that quest?” Mercy asks.

I fill her in. “We might get credit for our previous misadventures in cave R-32 at the bottom of the dungeon. Doesn't matter much right now. Franco, Quins, what classes did you get?”

Quins answers first. “Grenadier, sir. Figure I might do a little bit of explodin’ things.”

“Huh,” I reply. “What are the techniques like?”

“Let’s see, shall we?” Quinton holds a palm up and iridescent, ghostly clockwork gears appear in his hand. He closes his eyes and the gears begin to turn. Over the course of a minute they spin faster and faster until a ding! sounds and a dark green, spherical grenade fades in as the gears fade away. I scan it right away.

Quins's Basic Explosive Grenade. A basic grenade that explodes with a 1m heavy damage radius and a 3 meter light damage radius. Expires in 1 hour.

I've read the reports, but up until now I hadn't seen Creation magic in action. For the Engineer class tree, the classes grant “Creations” instead of chants, invocations, techniques or spells. These use “Creativity Points” which are equal to your Luck. CP seem to regenerate over time based on some unknown factor. Gwen L'Ronge seems to think it both varies from person to person and depends on your mood.

“How often?” I ask, unnecessarily cutting out words for brevity.

“Ah, my Luck's about 30, so I can do one more ‘fore I'm spent.” He then pulls the pin, flips off the handle and safety lever before chucking it out the dungeon's front door. A few seconds later it explodes, with a loud bompf!

I look at him, annoyed. “Wot?” He shrugs. “Gotta make sure it works before we actually need it.” He then starts making another and I turn to Franco.

“Barbarian. Got that rage technique straight away. Doesn't work on my SAW though.” He was referring to his heavy machine gun, called in some circles a “Squad Automatic Weapon,” because really only one person in a group ever needs one.

I knew about the Barbarian class and the Rage technique too. Rage boosts Strength, Toughness and Constitution while docking your mental stats severely. And since it doesn't help your Dexterity, it doesn't help you shoot straight.

“It's not a bad thing,” I say. “Two of the three subclasses will work for you. Just make it to level three and you'll be stoked.”

Franco, the big dummy, nods and seriously says, “good, I love being stoked.”

I advance down the tunnel with Quinton Sheffield and Dominic Franco on my left and right, as planned. Just like we'd done for the Get! run, I'm having the new guys engage 1st floor enemies while I clear them out quickly.

We get into the first cavern and I'm stopped by the sight of it. It's R-32. The long ridge we hid behind. The cluster of barrels. The middle plateau, the bottom area hidden by the low ceiling. It's all here, except it's covered in gravestones.

Dozens and dozens of classic, tooth shaped, grey stone slabs are all over the cave. Each one where someone died. Each marks a dead man. And each has an engraving.

Farman, killed by Jun Kyung Han.

Siamak, killed by Jose Amarillo.

Mazdak, killed by Jose Amarillo.

Roshaan, killed by Jun Kyung Han.

It goes on. Each one has a different name. Each one was 100% accurate on who killed that man. This is... This is...

“Are they for real?” asks Mercy from behind me.

“Seems dungeon made, but they're spot on,” Jose says. “I thought I got this guy by the table. Davis got credit. Huh.”

Graves in a cave. Personal to me, but this is still a dungeon. I pull myself together. “Heads on swivels, expect undead,” I tell the team. I pull on a ghostly armband which will supposedly keep undead from attacking me. We'll see if it works.

I move forward and put my mind to clearing out the floor before ruminating on anything. I sweep through the first area and we don't find anything killable. I look down into the middle area. There's a steep ramp down but I just hop the 15 foot cliff like it was a stairstep. Before anyone can follow, I hear them. They're chanting.

“Come, killers, come killers, come killers, come!” The low voices come out like shouted whispers in the cavern. Even though there's intermittent lighting from string lights, I don't see the enemies. There must be dozens of voices. They seem to be coming from all directions. They're coming from...

A man in a dark red robe leaps up from a tombstone's shadow. He has a curved, almost sickle-shaped knife. As he, no it, nears, I see its twisted, grey demonic face and know this isn't a human. It leans towards me but is suddenly stopped by my telekinetic wakizashi stabbing it and pushing it back. It squirms for a second while I scan.

Kafir Jinn. Tier 1. This is a minor local spirit, not to be confused with the local demons. To be honest, you probably won't have a problem with these.

Possible Loot: Leaping Knife

My blade spins in the creature's gut and yellow blood sprays onto the ground as it dies. I move over to inspect it. While humanoid, it looks like it has no musculature, just skin and bones. Its teeth are yellow, like its blood. The dark red, hooded robe seems entirely ordinary. Even the knife seems unremarkable.

I turn to Quins and Franco, who are back up on the ridge, looking down at me. I hear the spirit voices get louder. I give the order. “You guys are up. You don't need help on this,” and with that I leap back up 15 feet and walk towards the entrance. I hear them clamber and stride down the small cliff, then the twang of a bow and the chug of machine gun fire.

The others don't even ask. They're all dungeon veterans, even Alicia. I see Mercy transfixed by a cluster of five graves that carry my name.

“That was a grenade,” I say. “They hid behind that table.”

She turns to me and I see tears in her eyes. “I knew,” she says. “I knew, but this is a lot.” She motions to the dozens of other graves. And this first area is only about a third of R-32.

I don't know what to say. They were combat kills, so they don't count as murder? Oh yeah, sweetie, I'm a bloodthirsty monster! No, no, I wouldn't call it mass murder, more like some murder.

She stands by my side and just holds my hand, still looking at the graves. “You are so much more than that moment,” she says.

I turn to her and she turns to me. I wipe her few tears away. “I don't understand,”

“You were Jun Kyung Han before this place. You are Jun Kyung Han now. This right here,” she points at the graves. “This is not all you are. You are more than fighting and death.”

“I am?” This sincerely puzzles me.

She holds my hands in hers. “You keep thinking about R-32 like it defined you. But what I know, who I know, is a man who is totally loyal. One who is kind and funny. A guy who is really, really shy. And a guy who is bumbling but super sweet.”

The gunfire stops and we both suddenly realize that we're having a moment in a combat zone. She lets my hands go and turns towards where the fighting seems to be wrapping up. “Sorry, that's just been building up for a while,” Mercy says.

Her words have hit me so hard that I feel dizzy.

Jose has been talking to Alicia, apparently, and he shouts back at us, “I'll take the boys and Bennet to clear the second floor. Take your time.”

“You have a really good best friend, you know that?” Mercy says.

“Yeah, I do know that.” I turn to her again. “It seems like the people around me are better at looking after me than I ever realized.”

She squeezes my hand. “We try.”

-----

Conversation Log 0001

Fortuna: So this is everyone, then?

Hyperion: Yes.

Spear Saint: Present!

Skull Master Flash: Yeah, yeah.

Saturn's 2nd Ring: Hello.

Hyperion: Is anyone having second thoughts? This is still all hypothetical until money changes hands.

Spear Saint: Not at all.

Skull Master Flash: Let's do this!

Fortuna: My philosophy backs up our actions.

Saturn's 2nd Ring: Which philosophy is that?

Fortuna: Pragmatism. We need to reduce the population.

Hyperion: These chat logs will be deleted, yes?

Skull Master Flash: Without a trace.

Hyperion: Saturn, any last second objections?

Saturn's 2nd Ring: No. I want to be strong.

Hyperion: Good, good. If we can all look at the documents I sent to you we can begin the process. There are ten steps to this plan. Estimated time to completion on your ends, everyone?

Spear Saint: About a year until testing, then it either works or it doesn't.

Skull Master Flash: assuming Spear gets the RNA problem taken care of, only a month after that.

Saturn's 2nd Ring: I already finished parts 3 and 6. Waiting on the others to advance before I finish part 9.

Fortuna: What an over achiever!

Saturn's 2nd Ring: It's just math, mostly. I'm using widely available AI to make most of the DRAC sites because that'll disguise both ourselves and our real goals. Procedural generation requires guidance, not step by step instruction.

Hyperion: Haha, you sure you don't want a raise, Saturn?

Saturn's 2nd Ring: I don't care about money.

Skull Master Flash: Yeah, he's a true litRPG, path to power nerd like me and Spear!

Hyperion: Alright, settle down. Now, if we can get back to business, I'd like to talk about dungeon mining.