NOVEL NEXT Chapter Eighteen: More Bad News
More Bad News
Every turn and angle of the trip back brought mind back to the people we had lost. On each corner I remembered a different quip or remark, or a conversation between equals. It should have been easier for how little I had known them, or the trickle of experience and power I had gained from it should have distracted me, but I reacted to the loss of the majority of my second party with jolts of sadness and fear at each noise coming from the corners of the Tower.
"I hate this," Hannah said.
"Me too. I know I only met them so very recently, but they were good people," I said.
"No. I'm sorry it sucks. I am angry that I cannot cry. I loved them. I did not know them for so long either, but trauma bonds. Now I just feel the screaming of someone locked deep within a block of ice inside, but it is so far away I am not even sure it is me," she said.
"That's fucking awful," I said, "I know it's not the same, but I have a habit of pushing feelings down. I'm mostly repression at this point, really. So I can kind of relate."
"Can't just tell me to open up though, right? I was open. Now I'm closed," she said.
"You can't really tell me to just open up either, to be fair. And maybe there are some abilities at higher levels," I said.
"Back to the acid mines, I hear if you drink a gallon, you get a prize," she said.
"What?" I said.
"It's just a turn of phrase. Nevermind. You're right, there is nothing to it but to put in the work and hope that that makes it better."
The clock struck 55 when we returned. We had wasted over seven hours on this quest, didn't feel like it; Hell, I couldn't even explain what we had been doing that could have taken that much time, but when we returned to the Guild, the chalkboard said 55:12:24, and we had to get a move on. There was actually a different person at the front desk, and they directed us to Artemis in a classroom, where she was sleeping in an armchair with a book in her hands. I was about to leave and let her sleep, when she heard us- likely the creaking and clanging of Hannah's armor- and jerked awake.
Her face went from groggy, to happy to see me, to shocked at the sight of Hannah. Then, seeing that there was nobody else behind us she said:
"No; fuck," and she sounded so tired.
"It was bad," Hannah said, "we didn't realize how bad until it was too late."
"I can't keep doing this. I can't keep sending people out to die," she said and threw her journal across the room. But it landed near me and so I picked it up.
"It's Hell out there, Artemis. I've been thinking about it, and the only way we can make it less like Hell is if we grow strong enough to bear it. And you are the only one keeping us all together enough that we can move ahead," I said and held it out to her.
"How the fuck am I keeping us together? Twelve quests, nine people dead and it hasn't even been two days. Except it's more than nine, isn't it?" Artemis said.
"Nobody else made it, Artemis. I shouldn't have made it," Hannah said.
"Fuck. God fucking damn it, they should invent new swear words for this garbage slime situation, it's not enough," she said.
We stood there, in agreement, until, after a few minutes, Artemis walked over, took her journal from out of my hands and broke the silence.
"Lay it on me, we might as well get something fucking useful out of this situation," she said.
"Feels wrong. Using it," Hannah said.
"It is. We do wrong things every day to survive," Artemis said.
And so I told her. About the vibes, the lounge, the necromancer. About Sig, James and Bella. About what had happened to Hannah. About her new class and about the safe room at the Lounge.
"Damn, Alex, I don't know if anyone else I know has saved as many lives as you have. Maybe even compared to back on Earth," Artemis said.
"Did you know a lot of lifesavers back in the old world?" I said. I wanted to change the subject. I didn't save people, I got them killed.
"More than you think. People sacrifice shit for the good of the community all the time, every day; you take the subway with them. Most of them don't advertise, most just keep pushing that boulder up that hill," Artemis said.
"Sisyphus? I seem to recall that the boulder would roll back the mountain before he ever managed to push it all the way to the top, forever," I said.
"Well, judging by that scratching from your notebook, I'm guessing that's quest fucking complete," Artemis said, as she opened her own journal. Her eyebrows shot up, "Well that's new."
I went to check my own journal. First of all, the amount of experience points we got was crazy. I had been a good way into level 5 after clearing the room, but this quest pushed me to 6 on its own, and it looked like Artemis had also gained a level judging by how she had taken out a pencil to check the boxes next to attributes and abilities. There was something else too:
Achievements
Where Everybody Knows Your Name: Completed a quest that lead you to clear a Lounge location in the first 24 hours of the Challenge. Reward: the Tower will clean and repair the Lounge and you will gain ownership of it with all the benefits and responsibilities that includes. The Lounge will be a safe area for the entire duration of the First Challenge.
Also, I put another point into Arcana. I had meditated semi-regularly back on Earth, my therapist suggested it, and it worked for me. I expect that is why I had points in the Enlightenment attribute at all. And Arcana didn't feel like emptiness, insight, or self-awareness; rather it felt like some three other concepts of self that we didn't have words for in English. It felt odd, certainly, but it made magic make a lot more sense.
Also,
You have gained an even level. Choose a level 6 Coward ability.
Hide in a hole: Whenever no other creature observes you for more than five minutes, you begin to rapidly recover hit points and magic. Your will recover 5% of health and mana per minute while in this state.
Traitor: Upon taking this ability you will gain a quest. You will then gain a new quest every 12 hours. The rewards of these quests will be 20% better than any quests you can receive from other sources.
Disassociate: You gain a spell-like ability, the sigil of which will appear in your mind clearly upon picking this ability. When activated, your consciousness will leave your body and you will act automatically. You will still take the same action as you would have 90% of the time. You will be immune to fear and charm effects for the duration, but unable to concentrate on any spells requiring concentration.
I wanted to take the last one. I'd give almost anything to not have had to go through the worst experiences of the last day again. And I could even sort of justify it- my fear resistance was trash, and the existence of charm effects was terrifying.
And speaking of things the existence of which was terrifying, the Traitor ability. I had no intention of taking it, but just knowing that it was an ability someone could take nearly sent me down a paranoia-spiral.
But Maslow ended up being the one determining the choice. Sure, there is the need for comfort and the need to avoid danger, but I was actively in severe pain at this time. I think I had broken some ribs, and almost certainly my left arm. I took the recovery ability and went to find a cupboard to hide into for 25 minutes.
It was kind of nice. As was so common, my fear of being with my own thoughts ended up being far worse than the thoughts themselves. And as the first five minutes passed and the healing began, I learned to love the cupboard. Relief from pain, there's nothing quite like it. Especially when you suddenly feel better about pains and aches you'd ignored so long that you didn't even consciously remember having them. I kept coming back to the strange things that the Tower was rewarding. Humans learn incredibly well from immediate positive reinforcement. If you want to make violent lunatics, you put people in a situation where they have the option to do violence and you reward them when they do it. I had so far assumed that that was the purpose of the Tower.
But now I was sitting in a dark, cramped space, and I could just feel myself learning that dark, cramped spaces are an excellent place to go to if you're in pain. Fifteen minutes in, my leading theory was that the Tower also encouraged acting like your class for some unfathomable reason. It rewarded me for hiding away from people, avoiding actively pursuing my goals, being a 'coward'. It felt wrong, I was still straining against my class. I felt I'd done enough to prove that I could overcome fear, but the stupid arbitrary restrictions required me to do so much more.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Level 6. More than half way there. I mean, not by the exp number, but I was already starting to ignore it. The Tower was throwing harder challenges at me, and awarding more experience in return. I was sure it would get slower over time, but for now it really didn't seem that complicated- one major quest gave me a level, as would fighting a bunch of enemies. I wasn't worried that I'd run out of time quite yet.
About twenty-two minutes in, I felt mostly healed and I left the cupboard. Chum was playing with a knife, it looked like he was trying to remember some sort of a game with the purpose of nearly, but not quite, chopping off your fingers. He looked entertained by it.
"Mornin', boss," Chum said.
"Wasn't sleeping. You've been quiet for a while, anything wrong?" I said.
"Well, you know. Most of my advice for someone your level would be about exploring the danger rooms, finding good spell scrolls, shit like that. In this Tower that's about as likely to get you killed as anything, so I've been trying to figure out how to make myself useful," Chum said.
"It might still be the best thing to do," I said.
"Nope, boss, the best thing you could do is pick up the demonologist class. The offer still stands. A plane like this your best chance is to grab as much power as you can get and deal with the fallout after you've survived it. I'll put a good word in for you with the man downstairs. If you die there'll probably be hardly any torture at all," Chum said.
"Not doing it, sorry. I think the Tower will try to make us- humans- fight against each other. Don't want to make it any easier," I said.
"Well, in that case, my advice stands. Level up, look for spells, put points into your Mind attributes," Chum said.
"Do you do anything for fun, Chum?" I said.
"Like a hobby? Sometimes an old contact summons me to go grab a drink or a fistful of pixie dust, but those are usually the ones that can't make any friends, and lemme tell you, a socially awkward demon summoner is awful company nine times out of ten," Chum said.
"So you just work and indulge in vices? That's not really a hobby," I said.
"What about you? You do anything interesting," Chum said.
"There are these games on Earth, called roleplaying games, and what I used to do is get my friends together and tell them a story. They'd pretend to be knights and wizards, and I'd tell them what happens when they do stuff, come up with the imaginary world they're in," I said.
"Actually it kind of is. I knew that violence, hard work and traveling for weeks on horseback sucks. It's just fun to imagine when you're sitting in a comfortable, warm room with your friends and just playing pretend to pass the time," I said. Chum chuckled and drank from a tiny bottle with some ghastly green liquid-gas substance in it.
"Alright, boss, you want advice, here's some advice: if you're going to insist to stick together with this guild and its members- which you shouldn't-, you're going to have to raise their morale and raise their levels. Right now most of them are taking it as a place to huddle together for safety, but that safety ain't gonna last. They're pants-pissing scared of what's out there, and that is correct of them, but if they keep going like they've been going everyone but you, Artemis and the undead chick are going to die horribly, and then you're going to feel guilty about it, and those sort of things stacking up will drive you mad. Can you run that game for them, maybe?" Chum said.
"Maybe for seven of them and it'd take, like four hours. I think your way might actually be better here. Know any spells that summon citrus?" I said.
"Ha. I think you should check out the lounge again. If I know anything at all about demiplanes, which, yes, I admit there's a distinct possibility that in this case I don't, you'll be pleasantly surprised about what you find there," Chum said.
And I had a thought. Now that I was done with being a coward, I could try doing some being helpful.
I checked in with Artemis first, to make sure that she was okay with the plan.
"I don't know, Alex, this sounds like a terrible idea. If Chum's right they're going to need levels, training, they should be going out to try to clear out rooms, not having a party," Artemis said.
"It's scary out there. Look, if you prefer you can ask around first, but these people are exhausted, terrified and most of them don't know each other. They're not ready for a fight, much less starting the grind, and besides..." I said.
"Yeah, you don't look so good," Artemis said.
"I'm about to fucking snap and stare at a wall for the remaining two days if I don't do something nice. Something with people around," I said.
"Fine. Anyone who wants to go can go. I'll go too, but only because if the Lounge is actually safe we should probably all move there. Just for a few hours," Artemis said.
"Until the end of the first 24 hours then," I said.
"Alright. Go and see who's coming," Artemis said.
I moved to the main guild room and said hi to Clarence and the bouncers. I learned that the new receptionist's name was Sai, and he was a pleasant enough guy to be around, but really busy for obvious reasons. There were a little over a hundred people split between three classrooms and the library here, and I could see the reasoning behind getting them all to a safe space. There were monsters in the halls, and there was no way for us to know that nothing would change about the state of the Tower as time went on.
"Shit, I just realized. The clean-up of the lounge. What's going to happen to the bodies?" I said as Hannah joined me.
"Probably for the best. Also best not to think about it," she said.
We moved to the most crowded part of the guild, the original room that Artemis had originally set up. Hoo boy, I hated public speaking.
"Listen up everybody," I said, raising my voice. The really embarrassing part was that in the last decade or so, the only times where I raised my voice had been roleplaying games. And so, when I spoke loudly to the room, wearing a wizard hat and holding a staff of gnarled wood, entirely too much Sir Ian McKellen creeped in. If he was a lot worse at acting, that is. But nevertheless, I pushed on:
"We've found a safe place, and it will be clean, comfortable and big enough to fit everybody. It is about an hour's walk south and Artemis has agreed that we should get moving as soon as we can. So get up, get your friends and start gathering your stuff."
The answer from the group was mostly groaning, though a few people started moving groggily, and once there was some movement, others joined in. I pushed down my first instinct of annoyance at them whining about walking for a couple of miles after they'd been sitting around for most of a day. Being scared was exhausting, I knew it as well as anybody.
"And if anyone has any experience serving drinks, or an instrument to play, you should talk to me on the way. It's past time for some R&R, don't you think?" I added. I had meant it to be more of a surprise, but it was clear that they needed a lot of carrots and sticks to engage in even the lightest of activity just then.
In the end only a little less than half of the people agreed to come with us, even with Artemis coming along. The majority still clearly thought of the classroom as 'the Guild' and didn't want to leave. Artemis came with us to show initiative and guidance, which helped, but not by as much as I'd hoped. The lawyer and the bouncers stayed behind, in case of any trouble.
The walk itself was fairly uneventful, which is to say that when a few ooze constructs sloughed out of the walls there was a lot of screaming, zero casualties and two level-ups for the previously level 1 people in the group.
When we got to the lounge it had transformed entirely. The bodies of Hannah's friends were indeed gone, as were the remains of the necromancer, the zombies and flesh monstrosities we'd seen before. A great deal of comfortable seating had been set around the room, not quite a hundred couches, beanbags and chairs, but enough for most of the group to sit. There was a lot of green and black patterned carpeting, and each seat was of a different style and color. The room was lowly lit and warm, there were tables, simple but functional, and there was even a small kitchenette with a microwave, a fridge and a sink.
Hannah went in first just in case there was some trap or ambush waiting, and I went in after her, but it seemed like the journal wasn't lying. Until she mentioned it, I hadn't really considered that it could lie, but we really didn't know enough about how it worked to be sure about anything. Chum said it's probably fine, but to be careful, so we'd been careful and checked the room carefully for traps, including checking the floors with her sword.
So then I checked the fridge.
Scratch that, I went up to the fridge, intending to check it, then froze as an image of a spike-covered monster leaping out of it flashed in my mind. It was real for that moment to me. Then I took a breath and checked the fridge.
"Sweet!" I said.
Hannah groaned in response. It was a questioning, curious groan. She was quickly learning how to groan like a zombie like a natural.
"I mean it's not enough food for a hundred, but this is stocked full. Eggs, milk, potatoes, vegetables, all sorts of stuff. And lemons and limes. Alright, we can do this," I said.
Hannah groaned exasperated. Well I thought it was a good idea.
As the people led by Artemis walked into the Lounge they found me conjuring ice, chopping it up, putting it in glasses and mixing drinks with spirits and citrus juice. There's two things you need for a cocktail to work at all. They're not enough to make a true masterpiece, but without them you're not going to make anything drinkable, or, at least anything more drinkable than a rum and coke. First is cold- the colder the drink, the less your nose and tongue will pick up the harsher flavors and smells of alcohol. The second is citrus. Sour is a perfect flavor counter-balance to alcoholic.
And with a very basic sugar syrup you could take those three ingredients you could make a daiquiri. Without the sugar syrup, as we didn't have it, you could make a really strong drink that would go down relatively easy and get you drunk.
As I slid glasses down the table, the adventurers came and started picking them up.