by Tao Wong
“Colonel now,” Labashi says with a touch of pride as he sits down next to me without asking.
“Ah. Congratulations. It’s your command here then?” I say, tilting my head toward where the Hakarta continue to clean up.
“Yes.”
“Nice.”
“I wanted to come by and congratulate you on your promotion and return. And thank you. The contract we established has been extremely lucrative,” Labashi says.
“M̀h'sái” I wave aside his thanks. “I understand you’ve been a lot of help. You and the Erethrans.”
One thing I like about Labashi is how smart he is. He picks up on the hint immediately. “Ms. Pearson and General Miller made arrangements after your disappearance. Earth is now an official training ground for the Erethran Army. Earth—your people—pays the long-range teleportation fees for the army. In turn, they provide support during such engagements.”
Huh. I consider how that works. I doubt the Erethrans are at the pure beck and call of our people—it makes no sense for them to make such a deal—but I don’t bother asking Labashi. It’s unlikely he knows, and if he does, it’s unlikely he’d tell me. After all, I have a much better and more reliable source of information for this, and his revelation of such knowledge could be considered rude. No one likes having their allies spy on them.
“And your contract…” I say, leading him on. I might as well figure out the details on those.
Labashi flashes me another grin and leans forward, and suddenly, I’m reminded of our first meeting so many years ago. But this time, we’re finally on an even playing field, our Levels nearly the same and both of us having something the other wants.
An hour and a half later, Lana finally finds us, our conversation mostly over. The new contract is ready for inspection and for details to be hammered out. This time around, I refused to let Labashi push me into signing it immediately, allowing people like Lana and Katherine to review our new agreement in more detail. Still, the outline should be fine—increased presence of the Hakarta in our cities, using them as additional security forces for minor concessions in terms of buildings, access to the dungeons—which we now have four of—and of course, Credits.
Overall, I feel quite smug. Until Lana comes over, a thunderous look on her face.
“John. We need to talk.”
We walk in tense silence, headed out of the campgrounds. Ali, smartly, disappeared the moment Lana showed up. Of course, he’s floating right beside me, lounging in the air at full size—which is a really disturbing sight, by the way—but Lana is unable to see him.
As we pass the first set of guards, I finally open my mouth. “Lana—”
“Not yet,” Lana says curtly.
I follow, tight-lipped as we walk into the dark desert whose temperature is already dropping. From the shadows, I catch glimpses of the puppies and Roland as they spread out to deal with any potential threats. I look up but don’t spot the griffin, which reminds me that I know very little about those animals. The true ones and not the Mana-corrupted legends we have. After five minutes, I try again and am hushed.
Only when we are a couple of kilometers away from everyone does Lana stop. From her storage, she pulls and sets up a simple, metallic scepter. In the darkness, I can see the slight flush in her cheeks, the tension in her shoulders.
“Now we can speak,” Lana states. When I open my mouth to do so, I find a finger up in my face. “What the hell were you thinking you were doing?”
“Talking—”
“Negotiating! With Labashi,” Lana snaps.
“You make it sound like he’s an enemy.”
“He’s a mercenary. A friendly one, but a merc,” Lana says fiercely. “And you had no right to negotiate with him. None!”
“Actually—”
“Don’t give me that settlement owner garbage,” Lana snarls, waving her finger in my face. My eyes narrow, her words igniting the anger inside me as she plows on. “You’ve been gone for four years. Four! We’ve been taking care of all of it in your place. The negotiations. The politics. The endless meetings and assassination attempts. And you’ve never even once contacted me!”
I open my mouth to protest, to explain, to shout back. But at the end, there’s a slight hitch in her words, a hiccup. I stare, the anger doused as understanding sweeps through me. Then I step closer, ignoring her finger, and wrap my arms around the redhead, hugging her tightly. She struggles at first, but I’ve always been stronger than her. And eventually, she stops and just cries, her hands gripping me with nails digging into my back as she sobs.
“Damn you. Damn it…”
Lana eventually regains control, pushing against me more insistently. I let her go and she steps back, staring at me for a long time.
I can’t help but smile slightly. “You’re not going to slap me, are you?”
“If it wouldn’t hurt my hand more than your face, I might,” Lana says grumpily. “Baka.”
I chuckle, glad to hear Mikito’s trademark insult for me. When Lana sighs again, shaking her head, and steps back and away from me, I realize it’s nearly time for the real talk.
“John…” Lana says hesitantly.
“I know. You’ve got someone else,” I say softly. I feel a flash of pain, a deep ache in my chest and stomach that I ruthlessly quash. Not right now. “Anyone I know?”
“No. We met in South America…”
I shake my head. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not know. Not right now.”
Lana looks hurt for a second then smooths out her face, nodding in confirmation. “About Labashi. You really shouldn’t have done that. He’s a friend, and the deal you made isn’t bad. But there’s more in play than you realize. There are factions who want, need, that space.”
I consider what she said and I sigh. She’s right. I tried to take some of that into account while negotiating, but what’s available to Ali is significantly less than what is probably held in Lana’s head.
“Sorry. I did leave the deal unsigned,” I say, gesturing slightly and sending over the details. “I’m sure we can adjust it, if necessary.”
“It will be,” Lana mutters, staring at the document for a second before she dismisses the notification. “It’s… later. I’ll deal with it later.”
“And about the settlements…” I consider what to say. Eventually, I go with the simplest. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Lana stares at me for a moment then steps forward to give me a hard hug, murmuring into my chest, “I’m glad you’re back.”
“So am I.”
After that, we end up speaking about other things, just catching up. Even if our lives revolve around the System and the changes that have happened, we’ve still got lives. Hopes and dreams. Or at least, Lana does—and it’s her who ends up speaking mostly, gossiping about familiar friends, about changes in the settlement and mutual acquaintances. I find out that Jason and Sarah now have a trio of kids, the ankle-biters incredibly cute. Based on the videos that I view, I swear, all three of the kids must have specced Charisma.
I learn a lot about the world I left behind and the changes that have happened, the growth of the settlements. And perhaps one other thing—the deep pride Lana holds over the settlements, their growth and improvement. Vancouver’s a Large Town now, well on its way to being a city.
Hours pass quickly, and I can almost forget the last few years and think we are back. But there’s a distance between us now, a change in our relationship that neither of us dares prod or push too far. When I consider it, it leaves a dull ache in my heart, but it’s dull. Perhaps because I always dreaded this, always feared something like this for when I returned. Or perhaps I’ve just pushed down the pain.
We talk, and eventually we part when we hit the second sentry group, the guards offering quick nods to us. Lana heads deeper into the compound while I stand at the edge, repressed thoughts and emotions churning.
Logically, I understand what happened—I was gone for years, with littl
e guarantee that I’d be back, and we never had the relationship conversation even when we were together. We’d been working toward something more permanent, but we had both been hurt. And busy. So damn busy. Then I disappeared right after she lost Anna, leaving her to pick up the pieces of my settlements and an alliance that had relied on my Skill. Is it any surprise that she eventually found comfort somewhere else? If I hadn’t been stuck on a barren rock filled with murderous monsters and aliens, I might have succumbed too.
“John,” Mikito greets me as she walks up, the Japanese lady completing her perimeter walk. “You okay?”
“Perfectly fine,” I say, looking at her.
“Then stop standing at the perimeter without moving. You’re scaring the guards,” Mikito says.
I frown, wondering why, then realize I’ve been standing here for minutes. Huh. “I…”
“Come on,” Mikito says, gesturing for me to start walking.
I frown but follow her, curious about where she’s taking me before realizing it’s probably just to have another chat. A part of me wants to decline, to back out. Heart-to-hearts are draining. But…
“On the platform.”
I blink, realizing we’re standing in the middle of a clearing dominated by a small glowing platform that looks like Star Trek’s teleportation array, bracketed by gleaming steel pillars. I frown, but Mikito’s already walking onto it and looking at me impatiently, so I join her.
“Where are we going?”
“To work.”
Lights flare, growing so bright I have to squint before the world lurches, sending my stomach and senses spinning. And then the world disappears.
Chapter 4
“This.” Stab. “Is.” Pivot. “Not.” Kick. “What.” Cast. “I.” Cut. “Was.” Lunge. “Expecting.”
I recover and look around at the dead bodies of the monsters we’ve been fighting littered all around us. I do a mental tally and relax slightly when the number of half-dismembered heads and corpses equal the number of attackers I counted. The minimap agrees, but my time in the other world has made me rely on it much less. Too many ways for it to be tricked or be wrong.
For a moment, I regard the monster remains. Truly weird, these Penangallan. They start the fights with their full bodies, but if they aren’t killed immediately, they detach halfway through the fight and float their now tougher and more impervious heads and innards to attack us. That they use a combination of magic and an acid spit attack makes them even more annoying. As it stands, the pitted and scarred concrete and marble hallway is evidence of how hard they fought.
With a growl, I shake my head and glance out the hotel hallway to stare at the abandoned remnants of the city of Davao in the Philippines. Luckily, the teleportation managed to get us close to the city center, allowing us to meet up with the rest of the team here, rather than fighting through the monster-infested city.
“Does he always complain like that?” Hugo Karlsson, the six-foot-eight-inches, blond-haired, blue-eyed ubermensch asks.
I glance at the Level 21 Winter Ranger and find him staring back at me challengingly. Once again, I break eye contact first rather than push things.
“Come now, Hugo, you are being unfair. Mr. Lee has helped us clear this dungeon much faster,” Jamal Naser, the Level 39 Desert Seer, says to defend me. The native berber from Morocco nods at me, the older man with the rectangular face and dusky skin standing up from the corpses he has finished looting to wipe his left hand clean. Thankfully, I’ve got Ali to do my looting for me.
“Faster. But not needed,” Cheng Shao says.
“True. But I didn’t ask to join you,” I say to Shao, wondering what I did to annoy the black-haired Metal Mage.
Unfortunately, from the moment Mikito portaled us to this city, we barely had time for more than a few words of greeting before we launched our attack. Even at a glance, I can tell why we’re here—this dungeon is about to overrun its boundaries. We’ve got a ton of monsters to kill, making the trip through the space-altering, gravity-defying hotel floors even more annoying than normal. That the monsters are all at least Level 80, with some elites hitting Level 100, doesn’t make our fight any easier. It says something about the team we’re working with that we’re still cutting through the dungeon like a five-year-old with cake.
Then again, Shao and Hugo are both Master Classes. I admit, it was a bit of a blow to my ego to realize I’m not that special. After all, when the System came, others managed to luck out with their Perks and skip a Class level like me. And really, it’s a good thing for humanity that there are others who can kick ass.
“We can understand that,” Jamal replies to me, since no one else does. “But you’ll also understand that being pulled away from our normal duties for an unscheduled delve can be frustrating. We all have responsibilities.”
“Photo ops,” Mikito says with a sniff. “Speeches.”
“Not all of us crave the front lines,” a wide-hipped, curly-haired, short black woman with a strong Southern accent replies. Jessica Knox, Level 37 Cat Burglar and our scout for this little delve. I have to admit, she’s a looker with curves that go on for days, dark skin, and dreads to keep her curls in place.
“Move please.” Rae, the last member of the team rolls up in his mecha as he speaks, smaller mechanical arms whirling and buzzing as the arms exit the enclosed cockroach-like vehicle-cum-armor. Within seconds, the body next to me is dismembered, the mechanical arms pulling out the important parts and storing them away.
Normally, I’d put the bodies into my Altered Storage space, but I’ve yet to visit a proper Shop to sell four years’ worth of valuable corpses. Anyway, mecha man is getting all the expensive bits.
“Map update incoming,” the robotic voice says.
I grunt, getting the new notification from Rae. Just Rae. No last name, no indicator of sex. Other than the fact that he or she is a Level 42 Silver Cyborg, I’ve got nothing. And discreet inquiries to Mikito has yielded no further information. Rae doesn’t leave its robot—if it can. In fact, outside of such campaigns, Rae doesn’t interact with the rest of the champions. Still, their Skills and abilities are useful.
Using its skills, Rae attached a bug to Jessica for when she scouts. That bug then gives us a map of the areas the Burglar has explored, along with the monsters she’s seen. The level of detail in the updates is higher than anything I ever got from my drones—or Sam did from his—which is pretty impressive. It’s another reason why we’re kicking this dungeon’s ass. That Rae’s bugs can punch the basic updates to us through the dense Mana cloud inside the dungeon is even more impressive.
“All I’m saying is that we’re wasting good XP on this newcomer,” Hugo says.
I almost grind my teeth but push the anger aside. After all, Hugo was just a kid when all this started. And even if I don’t agree with the trend of seeing our new world as a game, he’s obviously made it work for him. And again, I remind myself, I’m an outsider here.
“This is a working introduction,” Mikito says simply, pointing with her naginata down the curved hallway. “So let’s work.”
“He doesn’t deserve to be here,” Shao says, her eyes glittering with contempt. “What has he done? I’ve never even heard of him.”
“Explorer. Monster Bane. Duelist. Master Class,” Rae’s metallic voice chirps from the trundling mecha. “Significant achievements.”
“And no fame,” Jessica says, shaking her head. “You know he won’t be accepted by the public.”
“Who cares about that?” Jamal says with a snort. “I’m happy to have another reliable body clearing these dungeons. Or on the front lines.”
“I do,” Jessica snaps. “I’ve got sponsorship deals to worry about here.”
“You know, no one’s asked if I want to be part of your little book club,” I say, frowning at the surge of dots coming.
I raise my hand, forming an Enhanced Lightning Strike then punch it out without a word of warning. The Lightning darts forward, formed throug
h the connection and channel I’ve created. The bright streaks of light hurt our eyes in the enclosed space. The Penangallan that get caught scream, twitching in agony as the lightning cooks their innards. It doesn’t take long before the other members add their area effect spells and Skills, tearing up the next wave before it reaches us.
“We’re the champions,” Jamal says, as if that statement is sufficient.
I guess, for many, it would be. After all, not to mention the fame and Credits they earn, the experience gains from running higher Level dungeons on a consistent basis would be very attractive. In this new world, Levels are power, just like money used to be in our previous world. It doesn’t matter where you are, Levels talk.
As for Jamal’s presumptive statement, I stay silent. It’s not my job to correct his misconceptions and overblown ego. While they might see this as a protracted interview, a testing ground to see if I’m worthy to join them, I’m taking it as a nice way to let loose a little. Not all the way, since I’d like to keep a few cards hidden, but enough to work out some of the frustrations that have been boiling up inside me. Juvenile perhaps, but hitting things is therapeutic. Stuck as I was, I’ve learned to take my stress relief where I can, even if it’s in the middle of a battlefield.
My continued silence drives the group to turn to other topics. Discussions about Skills, spells, and equipment dominate at first, with tactics and weird monsters leading. I keep an ear out, especially since most of these creatures sit around my target range. It’s kind of nice to be around people who can relate. But eventually, the topic shifts as we ascend the hotel floors.
“Hey, Cheng, were you able to get those tickets for KMC?” Jessica asks pleadingly. “You promised!”
“It’s Shao. I’ve told you before,” Cheng Shao says. “And their manager has promised us VIP passes. But they might have to delay the concert.”
“Again?” Jessica says grumpily.
“Soo-yi hasn’t managed to Level yet. They’re planning to hit that new Level 70 dungeon north of Seoul first,” Shao explains as her hands move, enchanted knives darting through the air to intercept and stab the Penangallan that attempt to swarm her.
