“There are no Syndicate outposts out here – the towns won’t allow them, as the towns want to have full control of every expenditure of the Adventurers here. Since they are technically not part of any Kingdom, it is hard for the DAS to control anything here, but it’s expected that people will pay their fair portion of the loot fee for whatever they acquire here, but it’s rarely enforced – because it’s extremely hard to prove how much is acquired in these non-DAS-sanctioned Dark dungeons.
“There are no jobs to run for any of the dungeons, either, since there are no job boards around; this place is considered to be a bit of a lawless wild frontier, which is another reason it’s so dangerous. There’s nothing watching over the operations here, so just about anything goes – so we need to watch ourselves every second we’re in town. Normally, I’d say it’s safer out in the Deadlands, but with the crazy amount of undead that attacked us on the way here, I’m not so sure anymore.”
That certainly wasn’t encouraging, but he guessed it didn’t matter because they weren’t planning on staying there long. Since he hadn’t seen a single person with a glowing mark above their heads when they were walking through town looking for the inn, he assumed that they either hadn’t been there at all or had left some time ago.
I’m sure we’ll be out of here before anything bad happens…right?
Chapter 21
After washing up in the surprisingly nice bath house in the back – which was separated into different areas for the two sexes – and removing most of the stink out of their clothes, they enjoyed another surprisingly good meal in the inn’s common room. Despite it being extraordinarily busy – they barely found a seat together along the long benches set up in long rows – they were able to get their food (and as much as they wanted, as well) rather quickly. After surviving on Fred’s Conjured supplies for the last few days, the simple stew and bread they were served was both hearty, filling, and – last, but not least – tasty. Regnark ended up eating five entire bowls and two whole loaves of bread before he was satisfied, but the staff serving everyone didn’t seem to care.
Which was probably because there were so many Adventurers packed into the room that were eating just as much or more than him. Many of them were C-Rated or slightly higher, with just a few in the D-Rated range; Fred didn’t see anyone higher than B-8th-Rated, however. There were dozens of different classes he had never heard of and quite a few that he had, and he had to stop himself after a minute after he realized he kept staring at people to see their Interfaces. He didn’t need to cause any trouble with the Adventurers in there; the last time he and Eisa had met someone not from their Guild or part of the town of Gatecross, they had chopped off Fred’s head and put visibly glowing marks above everyone else’s head. If anything positive had come from Eisa’s death, it was that she no longer had that mark.
Fred overheard Regnark asking questions of one of their tablemates, which caused him to pay more attention to hear the response over the loud hubbub of so many bodies pressed so close together. “You haven’t heard? Why are you here then—never mind, I guess the word hasn’t gotten out yet everywhere,” the shorter, stockier man to Regnark’s right started to tell him. “Someone reportedly found Shadow Glass in one of the nearby dungeons! That stuff is so rare and expensive that these towns are almost all filled to capacity right now – all because no one knows which dungeon it came from. They know that it did come from a dungeon instead of being created through a prohibitively expensive alchemical process, though, so everyone is searching and hoping to hit the jackpot.”
So that’s why there are so many people here.
Regardless of the reason behind the Adventurers all being there, it didn’t really matter to Fred. He wasn’t out to look for rare and expensive loot – he was there to find his Guild and the Gatecross townspeople and to…actually, he wasn’t really sure. He hadn’t thought that far; honestly, his only objective had been to find them and to get them somewhere safe from the retribution of the Nature Cores (and now the Earth Cores added to that) – wherever that might be. Speaking of that, it was about time to see if they could discreetly find out any information that would lead to them.
Unfortunately, Regnark was a little bit less than discreet.
“Huh, we may have to look into that once we’re done with our current job. Have you happened to see a large group of people with big glowing X’s above their heads?” the big man asked innocently, after hearing the description Fred had given him about the ones they were looking for.
The table around him went quiet as everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at Regnark…before breaking into raucous laughter. “What do you want with those fools?” the man to his right – a C-8th-Rated Elemental Ranger (who seemed to specialize in charging his arrows with different elements when fired, which Fred thought could be extremely useful) – choked out, the mirth more than obvious in his voice. “They were here more than two weeks ago looking for handouts from the people here – good luck with that, am I right?” he said as he looked around at the other Adventurers nearby, who laughed at his statement.
This could be easier to get information than I thought. From what he heard, they had only missed them by about two weeks, which meant that they had at least been there. The only problem with Regnark’s approach, however, was that almost everyone in the common room was looking at them – including the people working there.
“Why are you looking for them, anyway?” the same Elemental Ranger named Terrill (which Fred discovered when he looked at his Interface in more detail) asked Regnark.
“They’re friends of mine, actually. Do you know which way they went?”
More laughter greeted his question, and now Fred was starting to get a little angry. Why are they laughing at my people? What happened to them?
His question was answered rather quickly, fortunately. “Friends, huh? Well, I don’t know how good of friends they were, but they likely didn’t survive the trip to Allroads after they were kicked out. None of the other towns here would let them on their land because the word had already spread about their status to the others out here. Continuing to the southwest was their only choice, since they seemed fairly determined not to go back over the Plains of Grass to the east.”
They were kicked out? Who would do that? Though, when Fred thought about it for a moment, he realized that the entire Craytion Kingdom had done that, in a sense.
“Why were they kicked out? Was it because of their marks?” Regnark continued his questions, as it seemed that he was getting some valuable information. While that was true, Fred was getting more and more angry at the treatment his people suffered – and the next response from Terrill the Elemental Ranger just added fuel to the fire.
“Of course not! This place thrives on people marked, exiled, or those escaping judgement back in their old Kingdoms. No, it wasn’t for anything as stupid as that; it was because they didn’t have the one thing these people respect over anything else: gold. Or, at least they didn’t after the first night, when they woke up in the morning after camping out in the field and found that all of the PIBs were mysteriously missing. They should’ve known better than to fall asleep without at least one eye open around here – they’ll steal the clothes right off your back if you aren’t paying attention!” Terrill guffawed at his poor excuse of a joke, as the rest of the common room joined in the laughter.
They stole all of their money and then kicked them out when they couldn’t pay? How could they—I’ll kill every single one of them, including all these lousy Adventurers—
“Whoa, hold on there, Fred. It’s not worth getting all worked up over; we’ll leave this place as soon as we can and find them. There’s no way we can take all of these humans on at the same time, and if you do anything, you’ll just get us all killed. While you might survive due to your extraordinary healing ability granted by your existence as a dungeon core, we might not.”
Fred wasn’t sure what he was feeling, but it was unlike anything he had
experienced before. Red-hot fury ran through his system and he just wanted to kill all the filthy livestock in the room; he felt himself reaching out to establish a territory and—
Eisa’s hand on his leg shocked him out of his fit of rage and he slowly calmed down, the conversation around him returning to normalcy as Eisa leaned over and spoke into his ear to be heard over everyone else. “Are you okay?”
It took him a second to answer, as he tried to understand the feelings that she had snapped him out of. “Y-Yes…I think so…” he said, feeling the anger melting away at her touch for some reason. He breathed in a heavy breath to try to clear out the rest of his inflamed emotions from his mind and body. It was almost like he had been reacting to something instinctual – and he didn’t like it.
“Let’s go to our room, I think we all need a good night’s sleep before we head out in the morning for this ‘Allroads’ place that the man mentioned,” Eisa said, getting up and signaling to Regnark that they needed to leave. Originally, they were planning on visiting the red-roofed place for information after dinner, but it didn’t seem like it was needed anymore.
Fred followed them, feeling inordinately drained from his experience…which was why he missed the looks the staff was giving him and his friends on the way past.
Chapter 22
“—up. Fred! Wake up!”
Fred and the others had essentially collapsed on the two beds when they got back to their room – one for the large figure of Regnark and the other for him, Eisa, and Deecy – fully clothed, without even bothering to pull back the sheets. Within minutes, their exhaustion from the last couple of days finally caught up with them and they were out, despite the fact that the sun hadn’t even set yet for the day.
In fact, the only thing that they did – including not even removing their shoes – was ensure that they had locked and barred the door (an unusual but apparently necessary feature) to their surprisingly large and roomy accommodations before they fell asleep. They may have been dead tired, but they would be dead stupid not to have learned from the mistake of the very people they were looking for. The last thing any of them wanted was to wake up the next morning with all of their possessions gone – or even with their throats slit while they slept. Normally he didn’t care overly much about possessions because he could make more if he needed it, but Eisa had the Class Selector in her PIB – which would be relatively impossible for him to replicate on his own.
“Wha—what’s going on, Deecy?” his tired mind managed to Communicate to the Dire Wolf. He was so tired he could barely open his eyes, but when he did, he saw a Giant Dire Wolf face staring down at him. Um…why is she all big right now?
“Someone’s trying to break in. Several someones, actually – I can smell more than one out there, but they all stink so I’m not sure how many of them there really are.”
Fred opened up his eyes wider at that and tried to sit up, but there was something lying across his chest. He looked down and saw Eisa draped over him, drooling ever so slightly out of the side of her mouth. Carefully shaking her, he whispered in her ear at the same time. “Wake up, Eisa – someone’s trying to break in.”
She woke up just as slowly as he had earlier but seemed to snap awake when she realized what he had just said – and where she was lying. She sat up quickly and only then wiped away the drool from her face, before turning toward the faint sounds coming from the door to their room.
“Can you wake up Regnark?” Fred asked Deecy through his silent Mana Communication skill. “Quietly?” he added, not wanting the big man to be startled when he woke up.
While the Dire Wolf went over to the other bed and started to pull at the furs around his large frame, Fred got off the bed as silently as he could and tip-toed to the door, putting his ear to it in an attempt to determine what was going on. He could hear just the barest scuff of what sounded like boots against the wooden hallway floor, and there was a rattling in the door’s lock as someone worked on picking it. He had never seen anyone doing it before, but it was plainly obvious someone was doing it; after a few seconds, he heard a faint *click* as the lock disengaged and all that was keeping the door closed was the bar placed across the entire door and doorframe.
Fred stepped back as he saw a very faint bubble of Power emerge through the bottom gap in the door and float upwards, until it completely enveloped the sturdy wooden bar. He looked around at the others, who were all now alert and watching what was happening; it was only at that point that he realized that the only light in the room was coming from the small window in the far wall, where moonlight filtered through to provide the barest of illumination. Still, it was more than enough to make out the sight of the bar lifting up gently from the brackets where it was placed delicately down out of range of the doorway, making just the barest of noises as it touched the flooring.
Someone has obviously done this before – probably many times.
Everyone in the room had already prepared themselves for an attack; Fred had his knives out in preparation and some spells at the ready; Regnark had his bow and a quiver full of arrows ready, with his large two-handed longsword nearby (which wouldn’t be quite as useful in the tight quarters); Eisa had already transformed into her Earth Elemental form and was ready with her aura to create any defenders; Deecy, of course, had everything she needed in her Giant Dire Wolf form – but she added something that would help protect them a little more.
With an extension of her bluish aura, she formed an Ice Spear Barricade right in front of the door, which practically stabbed into the wood of the door and floor, securing it in place. Now, it would take quite a bit of effort to smash through it and fully open the door – which he hoped that whoever was out there would take as a sign that the people inside weren’t anyone to mess with. Fred knew that if they managed to get inside, it would likely end up with someone dying that night – and he was going to do whatever it took to ensure it wasn’t him or his friends.
He was expecting them to try to enter right away, but whoever was out there seemed to be inclined to take their time. Which turned out not to be the best idea, as it gave Fred too much time to think. Why are they targeting our room? What do they hope to steal from us? Is it because they know we’re associated with the marked people they already easily stole from and think we’re the same? The more he thought about the situation, the more he started to feel the same rage he had experienced before down in the common room – but this time Eisa wasn’t paying attention to him.
How dare they try to steal from us! They all deserve to die for their assault against me and mine! As the fury built in him, he again started to reach out to the surrounding area to establish a territory.
“Fred, I wouldn’t do that – you’ll paint a target right on us that—"
Deecy had obviously seen what he was attempting and tried to stop him, but it was too late – he was too far gone into his fury. Fred finished establishing a territory and he felt his awareness expand, until he could pinpoint every single person in town…including the six humans outside preparing themselves to sneak inside and steal from him – or worse. They were all C-Rated Adventurers of differing classes, but most of them had one thing in common – they all had sharp steel knives out and obviously ready to use.
He was about to start destroying the entire Inn in an attempt to destroy those that were intending more than just theft, but a hand on his shoulder made him pause. Eisa had obviously seen him establish his territory and was rightfully worried about what he would do; her touch wasn’t enough to drain away the anger as it had in the common room, but it did restrain his murderous impulses…a little.
“If we kill anyone, we’ll have the entire town after us. We need to leave here without getting into a fight,” she whispered softly with her lips so close to his ear that they were almost touching. He nodded mutely – signaling his understanding – but it was hard to keep from reaching down underneath the Inn and creating a massive hole where the entire building would sink into. His desire for
everyone near him – the people in his room excluded – to die was still there, but it was slightly muted due to Eisa’s infuriatingly reasonable words.
Instead of destroying the entire Inn, he instead only destroyed part of it. Walking quickly past everyone, he approached the far wall that led to the outside of the building and pressed his hand against the wood; using his Unconverted Mana, he shaped a large hole in the wall just as he did when he carved out holes or pits in the ground and removed the wood blocking them from outside. In less than a second, the moonlight shone through the large 5-foot-wide and 6-foot-tall portal to the outside, and Fred could feel the cool breeze of the pre-dawn night flow through, acting as a balm to the red-hot rage still simmering below the surface of his thoughts.
The thieves/murderers apparently took that as their signal to finally try to enter, and Fred could hear first a thud as they tried to open the door and failed as it wouldn’t budge against the Ice Spear Barricade Deecy had set up. When that didn’t work, they started to push harder on the door until the sounds of wood cracking and splintering filled their room.
Eisa took off from where she was standing and immediately jumped outside, falling to the ground without harm in her Earth Elemental form despite them being on the second floor. Fred followed quickly after and found the distance to the ground wasn’t actually too far, and he easily landed and rolled to absorb the shock of the fall and heard a thud against the ground behind him. Looking back, he saw that Regnark had also descended, though with less agility; still, due to his Body stat, he wasn’t injured from falling over 20 feet down to the ground.
Dungeon World 3: A Dungeon Core Experience Page 18