by Tao Wong
We’re a couple of settlements ahead of the main fighting force from Fort Irwin, and if the plan goes well, we’ll be sneaking through this suburb into the next, making our way slowly into LA itself. Cutting through the Angeles National Forest and its higher Level monsters gave us a way to sneak in that would be much more difficult for the larger army. Over the following few days, the Fort Irwin army will take over the settlements in the way, going on a slow and steady route rather than a blitzkrieg approach. That should reduce the likelihood that the Zarrie ambushes succeed, even if we give them more opportunities to do so. At the same time, I know that Camp Pendleton will step up their own attacks, pushing the Zarrie in the south and threatening their settlements there, forcing them to fight a battle on two fronts.
There’s a danger to that of course—the Zarrie could easily concentrate their forces and hit us hard, a term that I believe is defeat in detail. But that’s where the other aspect of the plan lies, the one that I’ve begun to realize is Miller’s goal. If we can get in deep enough, we can cause real trouble for the Zarrie while their men are busy. They’ve shown the ability to teleport large numbers of their men, more than we can. But it seems to require a significant number of individuals and cast time, something that we don’t need. If they can teleport in, we can teleport out. Or better, teleport our people in to where they expect to be safe.
And that’s what I think we might actually be going for, a location where the Master Classes will be. It’s why we’re trekking all over with Johnson’s people, checking out different spots. Because it’s not enough to take over the City Cores—those are, at best, temporary victories. While controlling them ensures that last-minute reinforcements via teleportation pads and instantaneous System-assisted communication is removed, it isn’t a guarantee of victory.
No, what we need to do to win is to destroy their ability to fight back. Their forces. And in that sense, the three Master Class Combat Classers are the main targets. Taking them out will reduce the Zarrie’s ability to wage an effective war, leaving them with only their non-Combat Master Classers within Los Angeles itself. A group that we can defeat as we take the City Cores.
In the world of the System, wars aren’t about land or resources. Or perhaps people are the resources of import. A single Master Class individual can change the face of a battle with a single Skill.
Which is why we’re moving in deeper than ever. We’ve already crossed most of the areas where the army will fight, close enough that I can wield my Portal Skill to put us there if a Master Class appears and I’m ordered to do so. Of course, we’d have to break the quantum lock that the shield has in place, but I’m certain that if I’m called, those will go down. But…
But meeting the Master Class individuals in battle, in a time and place that they know of, is a bad idea. They haven’t gotten this far by being stupid, and not having at least a few modes of retreat would be the definition of foolish. No. We need to hit them where they don’t expect it, which is why we’re sneaking in deep. If we can hit them when they’re not expecting it, when they’ve retreated or are resting, we might just have a chance.
Of course, the fact that I’m not at the various battle grounds might be a bit of a tip-off. Which is where the entertainers come in. Really, it didn’t take a genius to realize what they were for once I actually took the time to think about it. Hopefully though, since none of them had a conversation with me nor did Miller discuss matters directly, the actual plan to use them hasn’t been compromised. Once again, we’re relying on the exactness of information gathering in the System to launch our sneak attack.
Exhaling slowly, I find Lana looking at me with a cocked eyebrow. I shake my head, unable to tell her my thoughts and uncertain of what to say really. It is what it is. Either this gamble works, or we’re going to get stuck fighting in close quarters against more people than I’d like. Rather than answer me verbally, Lana flashes me a smile and hands me a bar of chocolate before turning back to her interface.
Tension mounts as one day turns into another. Cut off from any news, we can only move forward, sneaking from building to building, hiding from patrols and civilians in equal measure, working our way in deeper. We rely on a mixture of our scouts’ abilities, Sam’s drones, and the pets enhanced senses to give us warning. Even then, it’s slow going.
As I hunker behind an abandoned dumpster, its contents well past ripe and moving into that rarified sphere of rancid, I find myself holding my breath as an unanticipated Jarack Bounty Hunter saunters down the street, his black furred head turning side to side. The brown stripe running across its face gives it a weird, patchy look. Occasionally, the Jarack cocks its head to the side, sniffing loudly as it attempts to catch new scents.
Across the street, holding on to the wall by his fingertips, is Sam, his face red with the physical strain and his held breath. He’s barely ten feet off the ground, a vertical jump that took him out of the direct line of sight of the Jarack, but he’s vulnerable to the creature’s nose, even under the effects of Carlos’s scentless potion. Our scents have been diminished, not erased. It doesn’t help that I’m certain that the damn Jarack has a Skill that expands its senses.
Again the Jarack snuffles, its head tilted before it takes a few steps forward. Then it stops, cocking its head and sniffing again. I almost growl in frustration. A sudden crackle of sound from its communicator, set to speak softly but so loud in the silence around us, almost makes me jump. The Jarack growls and whines, its language translated in text for me by Ali.
“At Y 45, Z 38. Smelled something. New smell. Human. Not native. Beam weaponry. Old blood. No. No trace. Yes. I hunt runners. Six hundred Credits. No. Six. Five. Yes. No. I no want. Four five. Okay. Deposit half.”
The creature seems to smirk, its lips widening, then it looks around once more. It speaks after a moment, this time in English. “Lucky prey. New job pay more than stragglers. I have scent. I come back later. Best run. Run fast…”
Cackling to itself and us, its half-laugh half-howl setting our hairs on edge, the Jarack drops to its hands and lopes off. I blink, not having seen any others do that. Then again, this particular Jarack seemed more animalistic than others.
“Gods,” Mikito whispers next to me after the Galactic has been gone for five minutes, making me jump.
I stare at her, wondering when she managed to creep up on me. I must have been too focused on the damn monster.
“Johnson says move. No more daydreaming.”
Grunting, I scan the buildings one last time, an action that makes Mikito almost prod me in the back before I skitter forward. By this time, Sam’s already dropped down and disappeared down the alleyway, moving to the next point.
A day later, Ingrid comes back in the evening, armored jumpsuit torn and a slightly wide look in her eyes.
“Time to go.”
“Ingrid?” I say with a frown, already crossing to her.
Carlos beats me to it, a healing spell washing over her form, it’s tell-tale colors muted as Carlos pays the extra Mana to hide the illumination.
“Caught the bounty hunter sneaking up on us. He’d already caught Malik when I got there.”
“Malik?” Johnson asks concernedly.
“He’s fine. Watching the exit. We used Carlos’s goop potion on the body too,” Ingrid clarifies.
Johnson nods, relief flashing across his face. Without a further word, Ingrid steps aside, and the rest of the team crosses to the door toward our exit route. By now, this is all routine.
Chapter 15
Days of sneaking, creeping from one block to another. Our progress is agonizingly slow, our scouts forced to divert around clusters or, in some cases, push us through them at a run. And all the time, we make our way deeper, following the roughly mapped route.
Now, we all can see why. A simple piece of information, bought from the Shop. Because all that knowledge that can be bought cuts both ways.
After days, even if all the other areas we’ve been to haven’t pann
ed out, we’re here. Overlooking the former mansion, now refurbished and upgraded to suit Galactic tastes. Plants that none of us recognize lie around the well-kept lawns, the only visible defensive measure. Gold and brown, its walls reflect the desert sunlight while misters keep the inside cool. A weird mixture of high-tech and low, but who am I to complain?
My first sight of two of the Master Classes comes a few hours later. First is a Jarack, a staggering nine-foot-tall monster, its fur doing little to hide the rippling muscles that make up its animalistic form. It walks out of the house and lounges on a chair, a haunch of barely cooked meat in its hand. After the haunch is mostly done, the creature tosses the meat to one of the cactus-like plants that lunges forward, its spiky body opening to clamp shut on the bone.
W’mee of the Three Sands, Heretic of the Dawn, Slayer of Grayak Scorpions and Master of the Yellow Pit (Level 18 Singer of the Thrice-Dipped Blades)
HP: 4280/4280
MP: 1780/1780
Conditions: Skin of Basalt, The Sands Blessing
“Sands Blessing?” I send to Ali, getting a mental shrug back. I almost want to growl at him, but without a direct connection to the Shop, Ali’s a little more limited in his research possibilities.
Still, after a moment he sends more information. “Probably an overall damage reduction buff.”
A thin, obsidian-skinned female clad in nothing but her birthday suit walks out soon after. A moment’s view and I realize that she doesn’t look dark, she literally is dark—a creature made of fleshy stone that shifts unnaturally as she walks. It’s almost as if she doesn’t have a skeleton. Standing next to W’mee, the woman speaks in the Jarack’s language. We’re too far away for Ali to hear and translate, so I can only consider the creature before me.
Km, Mistress of the Purple Pit, Slayer of Goblins, Hakarta, Jarack, Minaa and Griffons (Level 8 Obsidian Oracle)
HP: 980/980
MP: 7830/7830
Conditions: Skin of Obsidian, Earthen Link, The Stone’s Memory
We watch in silence for a time. Km returns to the residence before W’mee does an hour later. Without anything further to hold our attention, most of us fall back, leaving a single scout to watch and report. As much as we’d like to attack, we have to wait to give the others time to get in position.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Johnson says, his voice soft, “but you only get Slayer titles when you’ve killed a large number of individuals, right?”
“Yes,” Ali answers, frowning. “Total numbers vary depending on the creature—after all, otherwise it’d be real easy to get a Slayer of Ants or Goblins—but we’re looking at thousands at the minimum.”
“Balls…” curses one of the soldiers, his hair closely cut in an attempt to hide his balding top spot. Ian something. Redford. A quick glance at his name confirms it. “She’s a stone-cold killer, that one.”
Groans erupt. Somehow, the image of a cursing, punning soldier never made its way into collective media. Probably for the best.
“We’re thinking close combat build for the jackal?” Johnson says, pulling our attention back to business. At the nods and words of agreement, Johnson continues. “We’ll need teams three and five on him then. In the short term, Ms. Pearson—”
“Lana,” Lana reminds Johnson, who shrugs.
“Km looks to be specced as a Mage. She should be our first target,” I say, rubbing my chin. “I don’t like that Earthen Blessing—it could be a damage reduction or damage shifting Skill. If that’s the case, she’ll probably be a lot harder to kill than her health actually indicates.”
“If you boys open up on her, I’ll finish off the job,” Ingrid says from her position against the wall, where she’s carefully cleaning her nails with a knife.
“Not a bad plan,” I say. “We still got the last Master Class to handle.”
“The Bastion, right? Defensive caster?” Mikito says.
“Closer to Mike,” Ali corrects. “A Paladin-like build—good healing, good area control, and high defense.”
“Teams One and Four then?” Johnson says musingly.
“Four to six,” I reply. That’ll put one Hakarta team and the marines on him, which means mostly long-range fire and overwhelming explosions. It should, with care, at least push the Bastion to stay on the defensive and out of helping his teammates, allowing us to finish the fight.
“And you, Mr. Lee?” Johnson asks, his head tilted.
“I’ll throw in where I’m needed, but I’ll start on the mage once everyone is Ported here,” I say after some consideration.
Better to finish her than to wait. Johnson and his team, while strong, aren’t really suited for the all-out combat we can expect. It’s why we’re going to be pushing his people to the outskirts to guard against reinforcements when this finally kicks off.
After that, we sketch out the battle plans a bit more. There’s no guarantee we’ll fight all three of them at once, even if that is our goal. We have no concern about being overheard—after all, if they know enough to ask those kinds of questions, they know enough to find and end us.
Two days pass. Two days because there was no good way to estimate how long it’d have taken us to get in, so we’re working on an estimated timeline for everyone else to get into place. And so we find ourselves watching the Master Classers. It’s rare for all three of them to hang out at the same time in the same building. I would have expected them to stay by themselves, but whether it’s because they’re an old team, forced to work together, or some other form of politics, they’re all sticking to the same residence. That makes our life easier, since we know where they are. Theoretically. Problem is, they’re rarely home.
That fast becomes the major concern. That one day when the two Master Classers were together was an anomaly. Often, the mansion is empty of them all; other times, only a single Master Classer is around. It’s no surprise—the armies must be pushing forward, and the Master Classers are their most powerful weapons. While it’s not a good idea for them to always be on the front—and I understand the politics involved mean that they aren’t likely to follow orders that closely anyway—they probably have other, closer, resting areas. When they do come back to the mansion, we get to see some of the after-effects of the fights—a scorched tail here, a slightly different body configuration on Km there. And still, we wait.
This morning sees the return of Km, the mage looking as though she’s been put through the grinder. Instead of smooth, shiny skin, its scratched and marred, pieces chipped away and some dark fluid leaking out. The damage is surprising, since injuries under the aegis of the System heal within ten minutes mostly. I squint, calling up her Status.
Km (Level 8 Obsidian Oracle, Mistress of the Purple Pit, Slayer of Goblins, Hakarta, Jarack, Minaa, Griffons)
HP: 631/980
MP: 7830/7830
Conditions: Skin of Obsidian, Earthen Link (Disrupted), The Stone’s Memory (Corrupted), Chipped * 3
“Chipped?”
“Like it? I figured that’s the closest explanation I could find. It’s the Ez’s equivalent of losing a… hmmm… finger? Fingers? Since they’re fluid in their construction, damage for them is a bit longer lasting. She’ll need to rest to heal, but she will heal.”
“They did good,” I mutter softly, my voice muffled by the helmet.
Once she’s gone, we settle back into our usual routine of waiting. For a moment, I regard my friends, wondering if any of them will fall today. Ingrid’s in her corner, playing with her knife and a System-generated screen game. I still can’t see her Level and I’m fast believing that I never will. Still, I’m pretty sure from conversations I’ve overheard that she’s at least over Level 10 in her Advanced Class.
Mikito’s downstairs, going through her forms with a pair of soldiers, training as always. Between her constant training and dungeon delving, she’s the highest Leveled of our team at Level 17. Lana, on the other hand, is the lowest, barely crossing Level 4 now that she’s stopped splitting her experience.
She’s busy on her screen, reading for pleasure now that she’s caught up on all her paperwork. When I asked Lana earlier what she was reading, she showed me the cover of a bodice ripper by someone called Georgette Heyer. Not surprisingly, I backed off pretty fast, though the predatory glint in her eye made me wonder if she was getting the wrong idea.
Both Sam and Carlos have caught up with Lana, having spent more time dedicated to their actual Classes, and are at Level 9 and 10. They’ve taken over a floor upstairs after having promised to be careful about the kind of experiments they’ll do. They’ve roped in a couple of Johnson’s men, when they aren’t on watch, to help with their experiments.
Me? I just curled up and got back to reading.
… to work around the low sample size of Master Class subjects, we used a large number of specialized Advanced Classers, many of whom have dedicated their unassigned attributes to enhance assigned attributes. As such, we were able, as you can see in the following graph, to gather a statistically significant sample size of individuals with attributes above 500. This researcher does understand that the limitation of insufficient Master Class subjects might alter the results of this experiment, but believes that, following research done by Re & Makow and the Vuu Institute, such differences will be minimal.
Initial results from the experiment (see attached charts 42, 43, 44) indicate that overall increases in abilities do not progress in a highly correlated fashion. Overall trends do indicate a diminishing return upon reaching attribute levels over 100 (approximately, see additional discussion by Wexq, Fre, and Immik for attribute level progression). However, when examined from the perspective of species traits, a closer direct relationship between levels may be found.
It is advanced in this paper that it is due to some of the inherent features in a+ species that dictate the level progression in attributes for an individual. By understanding and conducting further research on each individual, it might be possible to ascertain the specific increases and alterations that increases in an attribute might create on a physical, mental, and molecular basis.