by Zeppy Cheng
“Very well,” says Jirgrar. “We have devils who can do many things. Profitable things.”
“How about this,” I say. “You and five other devils can leave and do your thing in the world for a week. After that I want a full report.”
Jirgrar bows his head. “As you command.”
And then the dream ends. When I wake up, Jirgrar and five devils are standing around my bed like butlers.
All of them bow at once. “We shall be on our way,” says Jirgrar. Two of the devils disappear into smoke. One walks through the wall. The other two leave using the front door.
Jirgrar remains. He bows again. “I shall safeguard your fame, your finances, and your reputation.” Then he sinks into the floor.
I am feeling nervous about this whole setup, but if these devils can do things for me, then at the very least I will be in for something interesting. I stay in bed a little while longer, considering the possibilities, and then get up.
A slip of paper pops into existence on my nightstand. I have acquired a cellular phone. My number is XXX-XXX-XXXX.
Well. I put the number into my phone and shoot Jirgrar a text — an action that makes me feel exceedingly strange. This is my number. Are you going to keep me updated through text?
Jirgrar: For small updates this is a good system.
I shrug and tuck my phone in my pocket.
There is a knock at the door. It’s Evan. “Hey, Markus. Looks like the Riding Valkyries have a dungeon to crawl today. Meet in the staging area at eleven.”
Classes are canceled on dungeon crawl days for the members of the guild called to clear them. With that in mind, I get dressed for the dungeon, not for classes, and head towards the elevator. As I am walking through the hall, I see one of my devils, dressed as a janitor. He makes eye contact with me and nods.
I pass him without doing more than acknowledging him. If the devils can infiltrate this building’s staff as fast as that, I wonder what kind of other stuff they can do. There are only six out there and I have two hundred and forty-five still inside me.
Crazy.
I meet Mr. Tuffman and the rest of the Riding Valkyries in the staging area of the Association HQ. It’s a lot like a bus garage or the room of a fire station. Lots of equipment is racked up on the grey concrete walls. Two big garage doors are fitted onto the street side.
The Association buses are parked along one side of the room. Today we are taking one instead of walking — we take one about half the time, depending on how far away the portal is. This one is at least ten miles away, in the suburbs.
I climb on board, behind Sarah and Mary, the thief. But before I can get up the steps, Mr. Tuffman stops me. I step back down.
“Markus,” says Mr. Tuffman, “we have fitted you with some armor and given you the designation of damage-per-second. We’ve also brought your bow from the shooting range.” He motions towards a series of racks that hold light armor and my trusty bow. There are no arrows.
I put on the armor. Since it is of the lightest class, it doesn’t take much to manage it. I’m done before the rest of the guild has boarded the bus. Carrying my strung bow, I sit down in the middle.
We start moving after a couple minutes. The trip to the portal location is uneventful. Soon I am standing in front of a rather large D-class portal that has appeared in the middle of a white-picket-fence grass lawn. The owners of the house and the residents of the street have been evacuated, and the Adventurer support team is keeping traffic out.
This time I am standing with the Adventurers, not the apprentices. I form an arrow in my hand and keep it close to my bow.
Mr. Tuffman stands before the group and holds the usual strategy talk. Since I am one of the Adventurers, this time I get to participate.
“Markus,” he says, “this is your first actual crawl as an Adventurer. We know your stats are now higher overall than any of us. In fact, if you had been this powerful from the beginning, our guild would have never been able to recruit you. Despite this, I want to put you in the back where we usually put new Adventurers. Is this okay?”
I nod. “It’s fine. I’m in no hurry.” In this position, I am only one or two steps above my previous place as apprentice. However, this position has room for advancement if I show my worth.
The strategy meeting continues for fifteen minutes. It’s routine stuff, and I don’t play a large role. All I am told to do is take whatever shots present themselves. My Anima vision will help with this for sure.
We enter the dungeon at 12:30 PM. The dungeon theme this time is a graveyard with a medical twist. The enemies will be ghost and undead types. Crypts rise out of the ground, covered in used hypodermic needles, medical equipment, and bones. Dried blood spatters cover all the stone surfaces.
A crowd of clattering skulls approach from the front.
“Contact!” yells Mary.
The team’s two DPS members form up. I stand between them. Mr. Tuffman throws up a gel shield — his spirit is an organic molecule that forms tight floating barriers. The skulls split into two streams, going around the gel shield. I nock an arrow and fire at an approaching skull. The arrow strikes it right in the forehead. The skull explodes into bone dust.
“Brandon would love this dungeon,” I mutter under my breath.
“Hm?” says Fera, one of the DPS members bedside me.
“Nothing.” I nock another arrow.
The skulls split into three streams and flow around the gel shields that Mr. Tuffman is still throwing up. Gilly — a multi-class — and Jesus — a marksman — move to counter them. I fire another arrow and blow another one to pieces. There are still at least two dozen, and they’re getting closer.
One skull flies straight at me. Before I can nock an arrow, Turner — another DPS — shoots it out of the sky. I dodge flying pieces of bone.
Gilly throws out an AOE spell. At least a dozen skulls go up in a pillar of flame. The rest of them back away, and then disappear into the graveyard hills.
Bismark, the technician, goes into action and starts sucking up all the skulls’ Spirit Rings. These skulls can’t be more than twenty years old. Essentially, they are trash circles, good only for industrial purposes, like spirit cheese.
Since I’m no longer a porter, I don’t have to carry anything. I don’t even have to carry arrows — I can shoot as many of them as I want. I suppose that is why I was assigned “damage per second” instead of “marksman.” An ordinary bow user would be assigned to the marksman role, as their limited arrow count would keep them from shooting at everything as fast as possible.
The whole dungeon smells of disinfectant, and not in a good way. In the distance a baby screams. Medical alarms beep, and every now and again a heart monitor flatlines.
I approach an empty, bloodstained bed. The other adventurers fan out to secure this room. It will be a while before the kites return, pulling mobs.
The bed shimmers.
I leap backwards.
The bed erupts into a mountain of syringes.
“Mimic!” yells Gilly.
The mimic darts out and grabs my ankle. I kick it away and conjure a dagger. The dagger is deflected out of my hands and the mimic latches on again. Just as a dirty needle is about to penetrate my skin, the whole thing is obliterated in a ball of orange fire.
I breathe heavily, resting on my knees. “Thanks, Gilly. I owe you one.”
Gilly slaps me on the back. “You’re powerful, but you lack field experience. Maybe in two years you’ll be at the top but right now you still don’t know to not approach suspicious objects in a dungeon.”
I scratch my neck. “Yeah, I got that lesson.”
“Mimics are tough.”
Gilly pauses, watching the hallway. “Looks like the kites are returning.”
Someone from around the corner yells. It’s the kites. Three party members race around the wall and enter our ranks.
“Form up!” yells Mr. Tuffman. The tanks take the first line of defense. The air is electric.
A gelatinous blob of chemicals careens into the room. The smell of antiseptic overwhelms me.
The monster hurls a glob of medical waste at our tanks. I dodge bits of hissing liquid and fire off two arrows. They sink into the blob and do no damage.
“Looks like it has immunity to physical attacks!” yells Mr. Tuffman. “Gilly! Can you figure out what it’s made of?”
Gilly rolls to avoid a splash of acid. “Nope! No idea!”
“Then can it burn?”
“I’ll try!” Gilly lights up a fireball and the monster disappears into acrid smoke.
“Gas masks!” yells Mr. Tuffman.
I hurriedly pull my gas mask out of my pack and strap it on just as a wave of noxious fumes rolls over me. Man, it smells so bad.
“Bogey down,” says Mr. Tuffman. “Check for casualties.”
We perform a roll call and wait until the fumes dissipate to go forward.
We reach the boss room without breaking any records. It’s a gigantic crypt surrounded by a fairy ring of gravestones. Misty purple gas floats around the edges, and the ground is strewn with biohazardous waste.
“Here we go!” says Mr. Tuffman. He steps into the fairy ring.
The crypt explodes into a mass of stone shards. A gigantic bull skeleton rises out of the ashes, its bones clacking with angry menace. Two dozen small skeletons leap out of the graves surrounding the crypt.
“Fera!” yells Mr. Tuffman. “Take Markus and handle the minions!”
Fera looks at me. I nod. We begin to shoot at the minion skeletons. I fire an arrow at the point my Anima vision tells me to. I make two, then three and then four kills.
One skeleton pops out of the ground behind me. I turn around in surprise and jam an arrow into its jaw. The skeleton clamps the arrow shaft with its teeth, its eyes filled with infernal blue fire. I push the skeleton away, trying to nock an arrow. The skeleton snaps the arrow in its mouth and grabs me by the shoulders. Its clattering mouth hovers inches from my nose.
A hammer smashes the skeleton’s skull and sends fragments flying. It is Gilly.
“Thanks,” I say.
Gilly swings her hammer in a circle. “That’s what I’m good for, right? Smashing things up and turning them into fireballs.”
I form a steel dagger out of my Anima matter and store it in my belt. I’m not making the mistake of not having a close weapon again.
At least a dozen minion skeletons remain. I shoot arrow after arrow, each missile hitting its exact mark — the spot where my Anima vision tells me to shoot.
The minion skeletons are soon gone. The gigantic bull — the size of a house — continues to rampage through the graveyard, horns down and swinging at us. We haven’t had any casualties yet, but at this rate we won’t keep getting lucky.
I fire a dozen arrows as fast as I can. Even hitting the boss’s vitals, the arrows don’t do much good. Fat DPS I am.
Bismark signals the group. “We’re almost done! Keep pushing!”
Mr. Tuffman forms a gel shield in just the right place. The bull skeleton stumbles, driving its horns into the ground. Gravestone particles fly everywhere.
I continue to shoot my arrows. The bull tries to get up.
Gilly swings a final hammer blow and crushes the bull’s skull. Bone shards fall to the ground, tinkling. The monster is dead. The atmosphere chills.
“It’s yours,” says Mr. Tuffman to Gilly.
Gilly sits bedside the skeleton in a meditative pose. “Oh, god of the hammer, I ask you to imbue me with the power of my conquest…”
A large ring, probably around two hundred years old, lifts out of the dead skeleton-monster’s body and surrounds Gilly. It snaps into her chest, leaving behind a snow of falling particles. Gilly stands up. She flexes her fingers.
Mr. Tuffman turns to the apprentices, who have been waiting outside the boss zone. “We’re done. Pick up the items and let’s get out of here.”
My first dungeon crawl as an Adventurer has been successful.
15 The Contest
One week later, I am in my bedroom studying when Jirgrar rises out of the floorboards and bows to me. “As you asked,” he says, “I have come to report on what we have been doing to further your cause.”
I turn around in my chair, feeling a little bit strange that this is all happening. “Okay. What have you done so far?”
“We have been working political and business connections to grow your finances. I assume you have received the transfers we have made to your account?”
I turn around and check my bank account status — I haven’t done that in a while because all my living expenses are paid for by my guild and the government. One hundred thousand dollars. My account has a fat 100k in it. I feel a little weak in the limbs. “Um, where did this money come from?”
“Bounties,” says Jirgrar. “Of many kinds. As well as high-speed trading on several world stock markets.” He bows again. “I have a humble request to ask of you. We need at least ten more operators to work our various… activities.” He pauses. “Which are not unethical in any manner.” He seems to be mentioning this to make a point.
I sigh. “Okay. You can have ten more.”
“Very good,” says Jirgrar.
Ten devils manifest in a ring around my bed. They bow as one.
This is making me feel very strange, almost afraid, but I don’t know how else to handle it. And that fat $100k in my bank account does speak wonders about what they are doing.
The devils leave in much the same way the last batch did. I return to studying, though it takes a while for me to stop wondering what, exactly, all those devils are up to. I just hope that it won’t get me in trouble.
The CCC approaches. I am having a hard time keeping up with everything, and so I ask Dr. Barrimore to let me work fewer hours. I’m not really doing actual work there anyways. I’m just standing around being tested. Dr. Barrimore agrees, but only if I promise to keep to my artificial limitations and not discuss anything that happened in the lab.
I haven’t been to the Half Moon in a while, and I probably won’t be going any time soon. My schedule is just too full.
As the semester comes to a close, the CCC event is scheduled. It will take place, this year, in London. The scope of the event — it’s worldwide — didn’t really sink in until I signed for the plane ticket.
The number of worker devils that I let out into the world is slowly increasing. Every week I release another couple of them, as per Jirgrar’s request. At the time of the CCC event, there are about fifty devils wandering around the world, doing their thing.
Jirgrar tells me there are other networks of portal beings that my devils are fighting and negotiating with. My own devils have named themselves “Wagner’s Right of Way.” My bank account continues to grow. I purchase a nice car for my parents, and even offer to pay for a new house. They decline, saying they can take care of themselves and that my money is precious.
Not that I did any hard work for it.
The day comes when I board a plane bound for London. I sleep through the flight and don’t wake up until we land.
London is beautiful, but also kind of dreary. With my CCC teammates, I spend a good portion of my first day there being a tourist and taking photos. The competition starts the day after we arrive, in the auditorium of the London Adventurers’ Association building.
Over sixty schools gathered here to practice their conjuration. Ten are from the US, and the rest are from all around the world. There is a Japanese team, five Chinese teams, and a team from the UAE.
The sound of chatter fills the auditorium. All sixty teams are standing in staggered rows, each team gathered around its dedicated construction spot.
The structural competition is first. We have forty-five minutes to conjure and assemble the bridge. My alloys are used strategically at strong points in order to avoid running afoul of the diversity protocol.
We begin with the legs of the bridge, formed to support the bridge’s main st
ructure. There are seventeen strong points where my Rearden metal alloy is used to maximize its effectiveness. Somehow, I manage to make all seventeen parts without screwing up. The rule on conjured screw-ups is “five strikes and you have to use it.” That means, we can only throw out five conjured parts.
The strategy, then, is to use the remaining throwaways that are left when construction is finished to replace parts that are good enough but not perfect. Kind of like a mulligan in a card game.
The Ixtham team manages to create the entire bridge with five throwaways left. All five of the throwaways are used by me, which was agreed-upon beforehand, to strengthen the fasteners and tension points. We step back from our bridge five minutes before time’s up.
The room grows silent. Five teams of Judges hauling wagons full of weights enter the auditorium through its garage-type doors. They approach from all sides, starting at the four corners and the center.
I watch the team from India, as their bridge looks like it’s the most exotic one being tested first. It seems to have been made out of grass, woven like a basket and glued with some sort of epoxy or resin. Whatever the case, it handles quite a lot of weight — which doesn’t directly translate into points, as material modifiers need to be calculated.
The rules state that the moment you lose isn’t when your bridge collapses; instead, it’s when the first point of failure occurs. A single mismatched interlock that slips early and your bridge is out of the game.
After all, that’s how real engineering works.
The Judges go along the rows of bridges, testing each one with their weights slung in harnesses beneath the arch. Several bridges fail outright in collapsing mounds of strange materials, metals clanking and lighter stuff like paper and grass floating throughout the auditorium. Other bridges creak under the weight but hold. I notice more than one team not breathing while the Judges work.
They reach our station near last, as it is in the middle of the room. One Judge, a white-haired man with a long beard, places the harness on our bridge and begins loading it with weights.