With that task finished, we left the area around the Witch’s hut and started following Dan toward the monastery. We continued to keep the group close. Just because we knew the quickest and safest route through the swamp didn’t mean the aggro range had changed for any of the mobs.
We weren’t three minutes outside of the Witch’s area when Dan spoke up.
“Kiss Swamp Rat ass, Allinutsack!”
It came from out of nowhere and caused all of us to stop short and look at Dan.
“What the hell was that for?”
“Obvious, isn’t it? Not only did I not sleep with the Witch, but I saved all your asses! You can apologize at any time. I’m listening,” Dan said and continued on his path.
Dan was slightly ahead of the group, so he couldn’t see Wayne and I smirking and shrugging our shoulders at Jason. Dan was right; he did save our asses.
“Fine. I apologize for…”
“I don’t accept it!” Dan yelled.
“Seriously? You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
“Nah, I totally accept it. I just always wanted to say that. We’re good. I kind of want pizza.”
Yup. Dan was back to normal. For Dan.
Thanks to the help of the Witch, we traversed the swamp without engaging a single mob, although there were a few instances that we had to wait for something to cross out of our path.
We found the island, noted the entrance to the castle-like structure, and stood on the other side of the massive bog directly across from that entrance. I figured this would be where the bridge would rise. I also noted that there was a bit of ground between the edge of the island and the entrance. That would be a good place for the group to wait while I scouted the place.
“Dan, say the words. But not too loud. Just because we know how to take down the ones at the last Monastery, it doesn’t mean we would be as lucky against some swamp Wraith.”
Dan nodded his head and knelt on the ground. Before I could ask him what he was doing, he brought his face to just above the dirt and started whispering. After he finished speaking, bubbling could be seen in the water.
As we watched, a massive stone structure began to rise from the water. It was wide enough for a caravan to travel and was rising high above the water. A ramp led up to the top of the makeshift road, and I imagined there was a similar ramp on the other side.
“Dan, what was with kissing the dirt?”
“Funny, Alex. But not really.”
“I apologize for not having the same biting wit as Allister.”
“Apology accepted. And I made a guess that something like this would happen,” he said while pointing at the passage that was still rising in the water. “So if it came from earth, why not commune directly with the earth and get as close as possible. That way it would hear me, and I wouldn’t attract any wraiths.”
“And this is why he drives me mad! Moments of clarity, logic, and thought stuck in the middle of a tornado of forehead-slapping nonsense!”
“It’s ok, Alligram. If I were like that all the time, none of you would believe that I wasn’t really a deep cover operative.”
“And the nonsense has returned,” Jason said and turned to me. “How do you want to do this, Alex?”
I laughed at Dan and told the group my thoughts about waiting on the other side, before the entrance, since we had no idea how long this bridge would last.
Everyone agreed, and we traveled from the edge of the bog to the island, entirely without incident. On the far side of the bridge, not terribly far from the entrance, we found a place where the guys could wait while I scouted the area. Thankfully, there were no mobs waiting for us, and Dan confirmed that his larger map was free of any mobs.
Feeling good about the safety of my group, I walked through the entrance.
FBI Forensics Center (Basement)
It had been two weeks since Special Agents Bolden and Colvin spoke with Ryan Grimes. Bolden had received a message just the day before. It stated that Grimes thought he had found something and requested their presence at his office.
As before, the office was overflowing with documents, but this time Agent Bolden made note that the area around the two chairs had been cleared for them. Knowing how much Grimes disliked moving around his piles, Bolden was appreciative of this gesture. Despite having made room for the Agents, nothing else had changed. Grimes still wore a rock band t-shirt—this one of the Truckfighters—and had all his tattoos on display.
“We came as soon as we got your message, Agent Grimes. What have you found?”
“Please, call me Ry. And I don’t know if it’s something big or small, but it is definitely different.”
Grimes began separating a large number of piles of paperwork into stacks on his desk. After completing the task, he pointed to the first stack. “This is the data I was able to uncover on the Headquarters for AltCon. There are numerous, publicly available points of interest here. But nothing that seems irregular. As you can see, the stack is quite large, as you would expect from the main office of such a large company. Going through it all took up most of my time.
“However, what I found of interest wasn’t at the Headquarters. These smaller stacks,” Grimes said while pointing to three other piles, “represent satellite offices in the general area of the main building. Again, I found little of value in these, but they were the closest to the Headquarters, so I looked at them per your request.”
Grimes finally grabbed the last stack and placed it in front of Bolden and Colvin. “These, though, are quite interesting.”
“Is this another facility?”
“Yes, but you wouldn’t know it on the surface. AltCon, like many other multi-national corporations, has several shell fronts and LLCs that are intertwined into the larger framework of their empire. It helps them to streamline operations and, more often than not, manipulate the tax code.”
“Are we looking at tax fraud here?”
“No, nothing of the sort. I pulled their taxes and I can tell you that AltCon not only pays their taxes, they refuse to use a number of acceptable loopholes to lower their taxable income. In that, they are a model US business.”
“So what makes these different?”
“For starters, it doesn’t look like this installation is remotely tied to the company at all, at least not at first glance. Yet a shockingly large amount of money has been piped into it.
“The land is approximately 75 miles away from the Headquarters itself, and it sits just next to a large swath of federally-owned forest. Several special permits were required to zone this land. More so, the amount of power required for the location meant even more permits. A full connection to the already existing power grid had to be created. It got little notice, since AltCon paid for all of the work to add to the infrastructure.
“What kind of power output are we talking about?” asked Bolden.
“Massive. And when I saw the consumption, again through public records, I was able to track down what else would compare. I looked at all of the other US-based AltCon holdings and found only one property that was comparable. Their Headquarters.”
“Wait. They built another Headquarters in the middle of nowhere?”
“No. Sorry, that wasn’t clear. It wasn’t their entire building that was comparable. That is actually way more of an energy suck than this new place. What was comparable was the server farm hosted in the sub-basements of AltCon’s main building.”
“So they built another server farm away from the main building. That isn’t abnormal, right? I mean, you want to have something separate like that in case something goes wrong at the primary location.”
“In today’s day and age, Agent Colvin, the reason you build a separate server farm is to protect your data from hackers and thieves.”
“If I get to call you Ry, you have to call me Nico. And that’s what I’m talking about. Large companies do this all the time. They build a server farm to protect all of their data.”
Grimes was nodding his head
, with a big smile on his face that told Colvin that he had yet to give his big reveal.
“That’s exactly what I was thinking when I saw the power consumption and the infrastructure upgrades. But then I looked closer at those changes to the infrastructure. It appears that connectivity to the power grid wasn’t the only thing they added.”
“You have me in suspense here, Ry.”
“Come on! This is where I get to show you guys how skilled I am.”
Bolden chuckled and waved at him to go on.
“They also added a massive data transfer network from their headquarters to this offsite location. Now, you may be thinking, ‘Well how else would they get data from the Headquarters to their offsite location?’ But that isn’t how these things work. The point of these separate server farms is to take them off the grid. By connecting the site to their headquarters, they have in fact opened it to the very thing most companies fear. Hackers.”
“Hold on. So this isn’t a back-up server farm?”
“If it is, AltCon is the dumbest corporation in the history of corporations. And while I already leaned in this direction due to their failure to spot my value as a beta tester, I can’t believe they are this dumb. No, this is something else, and it’s being routed directly to their main building. It’s drawing as much power as the servers they already have running.”
“So we have a mystery on our hands.”
“That isn’t all, Agent Bolden.”
“Please. It looks like we are all first names here. Annabelle is fine.”
“Well, Annabelle, as I was saying, that isn’t all.”
With that, Grimes set out a series of pictures that had obviously been taken from an overhead satellite. The first picture was taken from quite a distance, and each subsequent picture got closer and closer to ground level.
“How did you get these? We don’t have a warrant for satellite coverage!”
“Seriously, Annabelle? You do realize there are almost more satellites in space now than there are cars on the road. I got these off the internet from a publicly available site.”
“Damn. They look good.”
Grimes passed over one of the photos that showed a bird’s-eye view of the structure he was talking about. “What do you notice here?”
“It looks like a damn bunker. The way it’s built, I would want that to be my last home when the zombie apocalypse comes.”
“And you would be right about that, Nico. It only has two levels above ground. And ten below. There also don’t appear to be any windows in the top two floors, and only one entrance. It’s a fortification.”
“Fortifications usually have means for defense.”
Grimes passed over two more satellite images.
“Holy shit. That looks a whole lot like a rotation of guards. While I can’t tell you if those guys have guns from these pictures, those are definitely the outfits of armed patrols,” Colvin said while pointing at numerous places on the picture.
Bolden looked up at Grimes, and he still had the smile on his face.
“Ooh. You have something else?”
Grimes nodded his head then provided one more photo.
“I know it’s hard to tell, but that picture shows the only entrance to the facility from any main road. It’s over a mile from the thoroughfare. Which means between that gate and the facility is a mile of forest blocking all sight of what is going on there,” Grimes explained, pointing out where the gate was. “There is no way anyone finds this facility unless they are really looking for it.”
“So we have a secret AltCon location, likely heavily guarded, sucking down massive amounts of power, and connected directly to their main headquarters. In a normal world, the amount of power would imply a server farm, but the very infrastructure in place negates that theory. Any other theories?”
“I’ve got nothing. But whatever is in there, AltCon looks to be mighty protective of it,” Grimes finished while pointing to the picture with what looked ominously like multiple armed men and the machinery to back them up.
Chapter 16
November 10th, 2043
There wasn’t much to see just past the entrance. The structure was shaped like a castle, and in that vein, there was a courtyard just through the gate. It was filthy and disgusting, just like the rest of the swamp. However, there weren’t any signs of a struggle or anything similar to the Monastery of Calm for that matter. Whether that was because the swamp didn’t perfectly preserve the scene like the ice did remained to be seen.
I relayed my initial findings to the group, telling them I had found an empty courtyard, and they asked if I intended to keep scouting before everyone went through the entrance.
“Yeah. We want as full of an understanding of this place as we can get. Besides, that’s what you guys pay me the big bucks for.”
“Wait, we pay him?”
“No, Dan. We don’t pay him,” Wayne answered.
“Ok. And don’t give me that look. I have no idea what my accountant does with most of my money.”
I let the guys continue with their banter and headed deeper into the Monastery. After a few more turns through abandoned halls, I came upon my first mob, a Defiled Monk. The robes he wore were stained with blood and dirt. He had a bald head, but it was also covered in filth. The Monk carried no weapons, but he did have wraps around his hands. It was the last part that gave me such joy, though. This monk was, most definitely, not alive.
“Guys, this may be way easier than we thought it was going to be.”
As I relayed what I had found, I continued to scout out the area. I encountered several more of the Defiled Monks, sometimes alone, and sometimes traveling in pairs. I never saw more than two Monks at the same time. The only thing that had me worried was that these Monks were all Yellow to me. With a Blue, I had no fear that Jason’s Banish Undead spell would land. With a Yellow, which could be several levels higher than us, I had my worries.
I ran back to the courtyard entrance and told the guys to meet up with me. I reminded them that with my Invis, I wasn’t setting off any obvious ambushes. That could change when they ran in, and I reminded them to be prepared.
My worries were for naught, though, and the courtyard remained empty as the group arrived together. Before they had stopped running, I started explaining, in general, the route that I took to Dan. I didn’t have Dan’s memory, so there was no way I could remember every turn. Dan asked a couple of questions about distances between mobs and then headed off to grab his first pull. I had given him exact directions to the first mob I saw, since it wasn’t terribly far from the entryway where we were standing.
Dan pulled the single, and Wayne engaged as he always did. The Monk was landing a number of strikes on Wayne and was doing a pretty good amount of damage. Nothing significant, but more than your average Yellow would do against a Tank with Wayne’s armor.
The reason for that, as we learned from Wayne, was that the Monk was counterattacking quite a bit against our Warrior. Clearly the Monk was a martial artist of some kind, so the counterattack skill made total sense. Thankfully, we didn’t generally rely on Wayne’s damage, and there weren’t any counterattacks from his back. So long as Wayne maintained aggro through his Bash, Taunt, Kick, and regular attacks, we were in no trouble.
What we all waited on, and with bated breath, was whether or not Jason’s Undead spell would land.
When the mob hit 75 percent, I gave Jason the nod to cast.
BOOM!
The mob flew to the floor, knocked on its ass. Its hit points went from 75 percent to 65 percent—a huge amount. More importantly, when it got knocked down, its armor class fell to almost nothing, and it was no longer counterattacking at all. True, I couldn’t hit it from behind when it was laid out, but it didn’t really matter. The fight was over in no time.
I looted the corpse and came up empty. There was nothing. No coins or items. Maybe the Monks took a vow of poverty when they joined the Monastery. I guess we would find out.
When I got up from looking at the corpse, the other guys were staring at Jason. He wasn’t staring back, though. He had that far-away look one gets when they are looking at something on their character.
“It’s the boots and the Tome. It has to be.”
The perplexing looks on our faces were enough to signal Jason should continue. No words were needed.
“When I got the boots from our last raid, do you remember what the bonuses were? Well, anyone other than Dan remember?”
“Something about Holy, right?”
“Exactly, Naugha. I got an increase of 20 percent effectiveness to all Holy spells. I forgot about it since there really doesn’t seem to be a resistance on me casting a heal on any player. The only time it would come into play is when I cast Stun. Or Banish Undead.”
“Holy shit! Pun intended.”
“Allowed this time, Alex. And that is exactly correct. I am guessing the knockback is a part of the bonus. On top of that, the Tome of Calm added another 20 percent effectiveness to all of my spells,” Jason said as he looked around the courtyard. “We thought this was going to be easier before. Well, I think we just broke the game.”
We all nodded our heads. No one wanted any player to be overpowered to the point they were unstoppable. Sure, we had great gear, and some could say we were an overpowered group; but when we made mistakes, we still got killed.
In this case, however, we were standing in the perfect storm. We had a Cleric, wearing two pieces of Legendary gear, one of which specifically increases attacks against Undead, which we were facing. In so many ways, this scenario just wouldn’t have played out, like if our group didn’t have a Cleric when we started or if the loot in the Captain’s room didn’t include these particular boots. Hell, since we were the only ones getting the Lady Tessa quest, even that variable added to it.
“Well, let’s run through it, then. Sacking a place that is not a challenge really isn’t all that fun, but the loot at the end will make up for any disappointment I feel now.”
“I agree, Dan. Still, the last Monastery did give us quite a few surprises. Maybe this one will do the same,” I said.
Restoration: The Rise of Resurgence: Book II Page 34
