“Huh?” Mia asked, probably making a rather foolish expression as she stared at Gabe.
“What she said,” Mark said wryly, apparently falling back on jokes to lighten the stress he must have been feeling. His hands moved idly, fidgeting, wringing each other in a nervous tic that he seemed unable to stop. “What do you mean you ‘didn’t dare to get any closer’?”
He sounded laudably calm, despite having just been told that Gabe found his parents in some monster-infested Alpine cavern and just left them there because something gave him the creeps.
Gabe, who was by far the strongest being either of them had ever met. Logically, she knew him being Rank 3 meant he wasn’t even halfway up the totem pole. After all, Rank 3 only went up to Level 100, while Rank 4 went till Level 200 and Rank 5 as far as Level 500, according to the System’s books.
Mia shook her head, Gabe had probably been in more life-and-death scenarios than everyone in their party combined. If he got the creeps, then it was likely best she trusted his gut feeling over her own shaky grasp of whatever went for common sense in the wider magical cosmos.
“But they were alive, right?” Mia asked, trying to get the most important facts right so Mark wouldn’t blow a gasket. Once he wasn’t fearing for his parents’ lives, he would probably come to the same conclusion as Mia.
“The spell wouldn’t have been able to lock onto them if they weren’t,” Gabe said with finality, then flicked his hand and held up a palm, showing them the small blue arrow that formed above it. “It’s strange, but I am certain that they are under some manner of an anti-divination ward. It lets me find their vague location, but nothing detailed. The spell broke when I tried to get it to tell me how far underground they were. Either one of them has a Class based around warding magic … or they stumbled upon someone who set up shop down there.”
“In the less than two months since shit went sideways, someone set up a secret base under the Alps?” Mia asked dubiously.
“Again, I am far from the only one who’d spent the last five years spirited away.” Gabe shrugged. “And if some mage wanted a base that couldn’t be found easily, they would certainly find an Alpine valley overrun with powerful monsters that also has a Dragon Vein run under it an extremely appealing location. A Rank 2 Earth Elementalist could easily tunnel down there and set up a small fortress, for example. A proper Earth Mage could do even more, and anchoring some Wards to their new self-constructed base would also be well within their capabilities. Maybe.”
“How sure are you that your spell broke because of a ward and not just because of the superdense mana there?” Mia asked haltingly. She didn’t know much about high-end mana theory and the like, but she recalled a book mentioning that mana always underwent a qualitative change as it grew denser. It was a linear improvement, and it was within bounds of reason, but there was an ephemeral threshold beyond which the mana could supposedly grasp Authority, Concepts and Fundamental Principles.
“Err, 8 out of 10 or thereabouts?” Gabe said awkwardly, scratching his cheek nervously. “The dense mana certainly helped weaken my spell, but I know I felt intent behind the action when my spell shattered.”
“So,” Mark said calmly, or at least he did his absolute best to remain calm. The look in his face told Mia even the dwarf wasn’t sure whether he’d break down crying or fly into a rage if he let go of his emotions. Even if he knew Gabe wasn’t responsible, Mia knew how horrible it must have felt to have his parents within metaphorical arm’s reach before having them torn away again. “What now?”
Mia gently reached over and patted his knee comfortingly, not looking at him because she knew Mark was not really the kind of person to express himself verbally or, if he could help it, physically. He showed he cared by always being there to fix whatever problem you had, and by being willing to wrestle a bear for you.
Still, he seemed to relax a bit at the slight physical contact. Mia hoped he was prepared because her Mom would be pampering the hell out of him when she heard about this development. He wouldn’t escape the hugs and getting fed until he could only roll away from the kitchen table instead of walking. Helene was the type of woman who thought hugs and a good food coma could, if not cure, then at least drag someone out of a depressive spiral for just a little while.
“We can do that ritual Nikki suggested?” Mia added her two cents. “To enhance Gabe’s tracking spell? Would that work?”
“It’s worth a try; I’m no master diviner by any metric, so I wouldn’t know,” Gabe said, shrugging awkwardly. “Sorry, Mark. I learned to never ignore my gut, and that place gave me the creeps.”
Mark slumped, then breathed a long, drawn-out sigh that seemed to take the last of his anger with it. “It’s fine. Thank you for checking on them. It is what it is. I now know they are alive at least; that’s something … I’m sure they are fine. Yeah. Like a stupid apocalypse could kill them.”
“We could also try other scrying and divination methods, or even send in summoned creatures to scout,” Mia said, her mind awhirl with ideas.
“All of those could be traced back to us by a competent mage,” Gabe said, apparently deciding he had to be the voice of reason. Or paranoia. “Not just anyone would bother or could set up a permanent base on a Dragon Vein. We need to be careful. Also, it’s common knowledge, but unless you have absolutely no choice, you don’t attack a mage in their workshop. The same applies even more strongly to an intelligent spell-casting monster and its lair … although I very much doubt one of those is the cause. Not nearly enough time has elapsed since the Rifts started showing up for a high-enough-levelled monster like that to escape one and regain enough of its sanity to settle down. It’s probably a mage of some kind having taken your parents in.”
“Would making contact … I mean, politely, be plausible?” Mia said, mostly just thinking aloud. “Like, could we do the mage equivalent of knocking on the door to see who’s home? Is there etiquette for the specifics of how we could do that or is it supposed to be an invite-only kind of thing?”
It would make sense if it was. She doubted a mage would set up their super secret workshop under a monster-infested mountain if they were the kind that appreciated unannounced visitors. No, that was the exact kind of person who might react murderously to anything of the sort.
Even if they figured out how to ‘knock’ properly, the mage might react like an American hearing someone banging on their door in the middle of the night. That is, by getting ready to exercise their Second Amendment Right to the fullest effect, possibly preventively if they deemed the ‘guests’ to already be invaders trespassing on their property.
“Maybe?” Gabe said with a wince, looking away. “I never had to do first contact with some hermit mage who might be able to wipe the floor with me before. I can make some guesses, but I doubt there are any universal rules for it.”
“A letter maybe?” Mia wondered aloud, then blinked when she noticed both of them looking at her. “I mean, you can’t get more polite and proper than sending a letter inquiring about what’s up with Mark’s parents, right? Gabe could send a Familiar to deliver it, a weaker one so it doesn’t appear like a hostile act?”
“We could write it in both English and Imperial Common to make sure they understand it,” Gabe mused, latching onto the idea. “Well … I don’t have a better idea. Barging in could end badly, even if we wave Mia around like a metaphorical ‘big stick’. Not everyone can recognise a Fae at a glance, much less a specific bloodline of fae they really shouldn’t offend. That trick only works on those well-informed enough to know how much shit they will be in if they harm her. I doubt a reclusive mage bothered to learn the big political no-no names; that kind of thing is only standard education for nobles and other political animals.”
“You said you couldn’t find a cave entrance, and couldn’t tell how far down they were,” Mark said, rejoining the conversation. He was focused now, steely resolve coiled in his muscles as the previous anger and desperation sharpened now that there was a possible way forward. “And then your summon would need to find this super secret lair.”
“I can use my contracted Elemental for the second part, guiding it from afar so that’s not a problem,” Gabe said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “I should be able to break the connection if things go to shit before it could be used against me, should the supposed mage be hostile. As for finding a way down … hmmm. I’m not even sure there is a way down. As I said, it could be some manner of earth-shaper we are dealing with who sealed up the tunnel behind themselves, but that’s just one way to get down deep underground without leaving behind a tunnel. It could get troublesome, but we won’t know until I take a closer look … carefully, from afar. Hmmm. Do you think your Mage friend might know a proper scrying ritual?”
“It’s worth asking,” Mia said. “And if she doesn’t, maybe there is one in the stash of books the Mayor is gathering. If it’s not there either, the next monthly Quest Rewards for that Realm Mayhem thing are little over a week away. Rifts also seem to reward things we want, so looking for one to destroy is also there as Plan … D?”
“Everything is still just conjecture,” Mark grumbled, clearly not liking how little they actually knew. “All we have to go off of to form theories are Gabe’s gut feelings and the ‘vibes’ he got when his spell broke. That’s … not a lot. Should we not confirm things first?”
“If it is a mage, or some other spellcaster of sufficient power, they might take us sniffing around, teasing their defences as a hostile action,” Gabe said warningly. “There are magical beasts and other magical races that like their privacy and defend their lairs viciously. They might be intelligent, sentient and fully sapient, but their thoughts tend to edge closer to bestial or monstrous than ours. You can’t expect a dragon to think like a human, to throw out an extreme example. If your parents are inside, they’ve either been captured or invited in. That’s entirely different than if we go and start scoping out the place like how an enemy would, and I’m certain that would put even the most genial hermit mage onto war footing.”
A sudden, troubling thought occurred to Mia, and she wasted no time in voicing it. “Could it be Starhaven? A blacksite of some sort? You said they wanted to establish a presence near, or preferably on the Dragon Vein.”
“Maybe?” Gabe said, pausing in thought, and Mia saw a worried frown creep onto his face. “I … think the odds are low, however. No Rank 2 operatives should have been able to pass through the barrier around the continent as of yet, but even a well-prepared Rank 1 ritualist team or construction squad could set up a simple warded blacksite. I would say they shouldn’t have been able to deploy wards powerful enough to shatter a spell powered by my mana, but they could have used some artifact to tap the Dragon Vein and use it to power the wards.”
“Okay,” Mia said slowly. “Okay. The odds are low, but far from zero, and the Starhaven assholes probably hate your guts, so we should avoid mentioning you by name in the letter if we go that route. We can only hope they, or whoever’s actually down there, treat their captives well even if they are interrogating them to learn all they can about our world.”
“Right,” Mark said somberly, closing his eyes for a moment, and Mia felt a pang of sympathy for him. If it was her mother down there, possibly interrogated, tortured, kidnapped or something worse than her overactive imagination could conjure up … she felt a deep stab of helplessness pierce her heart, followed by desperation and impotent rage.
Mia took a deep breath and scuttled over to give Mark a comforting side-hug, feeling him go stiff at the unexpected contact. He was more out of it than she’d thought.
“We’ll get them back,” Mia said softly, a gentle promise. “We’ll figure it out, and you know how they are; they might escape without help by the time we get there.”
Maybe it was stretching it a bit; Mark’s parents might have suffered from a chronic case of wanderlust and something approaching mild adrenaline addiction, but she wasn’t sure how they’d handle getting captured by some fantasy spooks. Still, the picture she painted loosened the tension she could feel in Mark’s shoulders and put a small, fond smile onto his face. Or at least she assumed it did, cause the damned dwarf hadn’t shaved in weeks, and his beard had grown without pause. If he was smaller, he’d probably look like one of those garden gnomes in a few more weeks and would have to start paying attention not to step on his beard.
His parents were strange people, and — although she only ever voiced it in the privacy of her own mind — perhaps not the best parents a child could ask for. They were the type of people who worked for four months like the Devil himself was chasing them, then took a week-long vacation doing something ridiculous. Mia distinctly remembered Mark spending a month living with her family when his parents went on a scuba diving trip around Indonesia. Or a week when they decided to see whether they could get through the treacherous Darian Gap that connected Central and South America. But strange as they were, they were good people, loving people, and fun. Mia remembered how she loved it whenever they came over and told her stories about their adventures.
They’d stopped their adventures when Mark was born, but the moment he turned fifteen they decided he was old enough and that they had more than a decade’s worth of missed adventures to catch up on. Not a choice Mia was happy with, or respected, but it wasn’t like they would have taken it well if a preteen girl told them they were shit parents. She never knew how to feel about them, not really, but that was just how things were sometimes.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Mark said, breathing a slow sigh. His voice was tinged with a bit of certainty now; it was brittle, but undeniably present. “You’re right. Sorry, and … thanks.”
Mia rolled her eyes at the awkward thanks, but smiled all the same. Stupid boys that they were, neither Mark nor Gabe was ever good at voicing their emotions. Whenever they forced themselves to, it sounded as if they were speaking a new language for the first time, and every word tasted strange on their tongues. It was kinda adorable, actually.
*****
Brent Steiner watched the newest batch of rookie militia recruits train. Even with Classes, magic and whatnot, physical conditioning and fitness were no less important. Perhaps they were even more important than ever before, considering the very real and quantifiable existence of Base Attributes.
He and the other older military personnel who’d volunteered for the task of acting as drill sergeants for the militia were all pleasantly surprised at the vigour with which the rookies threw themselves into the training. Maybe they shouldn’t have been; nearly every single one of the hundreds of angry young men and women sweating blood and tears had lost someone to the monsters over the last few weeks.
The few that didn’t were no less enthusiastic, however, and the reason for that turned out to be a … Well, Brent called it dopamine addiction; the trainees called it ‘min-maxing their stats’. Apparently, getting instant and quantifiable positive reinforcements in the form of System Notifications telling them their Base Attribute rose by a point did wonders for the motivation of the young, not that the threat of remaining weak and helpless in the face of another monster outbreak didn’t grant that in spades already.
This militia wouldn’t be up to military standards, but it wouldn’t need to be. They wouldn’t be using rifles and firearms — it would have been a waste since none of them had training with them, or the Classes required to make firearms a viable weapon against monsters — and their command structure would not be the same strict military hierarchy that the army operated under. They were … an experiment, something dreamt up by the Mayor and his new council of advisors: a new fighting force for a new world.
The ban on firearms for the militia also stemmed from the very important fact that ammunition was a rapidly shrinking resource. Their stores wouldn’t last more than another month, maybe two if they were exceptionally careful and economical.
The militia would help with that as well, saving the army from wasting bullets on lesser threats and, hopefully, replacing them entirely in time. But that was just Brent’s own private hope, since he thought the mayor’s own desire to have the enchanters and alchemists cook up magical firearms was a bit of a wild dream that they shouldn’t bother with until well into the future.
His eyes inevitably caught on one of the recruits, a half-elven girl with snow-white hair ending in teal tips near the end of her ponytail. She struggled like all of them, but she was one of the most driven out of them all. He could see the naked need to be stronger, to feel stronger and less helpless in her eyes whenever her body was about to give out.
Sophie Vexley, he reasoned, had even more pushing herself onwards than the rest, though it wasn’t like one could quantify trauma and motivations. From what he’d heard, the girl had barely survived New York descending into anarchy and chaos, and when Gabe arrived to save her, then transported her here, she was met by the fact that both of her younger siblings were considerably more powerful than her. That both of them had saved themselves, while she barely survived long enough to be saved.
After the physical conditioning portion of the day’s training was done, Brent and his fellow trainers — they couldn’t exactly be called drill sergeants in truth — let the militia recruits rest for a bit, then led them over to the newly constructed farms at the eastern edge of the city.
This was where most of the experimenting aimed at establishing a permanent, reliable food supply for the city was happening. Plant-based food turned out to be rather simple, since the making of alchemical fertiliser that provided ample nutrients to the soil and made crops planted there grow abundant and quick was apparently a rather simple process that alchemists used as a training recipe for their apprentices in other Realms, or so Brent had been told.
With the existence of Nature Affinity Farmer Classes possessing Skills that further boosted crop growth and yield, the plant-based part of their food supplies was largely taken care of. They had only a handful of Nature Farmers, the rest being Earth-, Water-, or Light-based, but those handful worked absolute miracles in the fields and possibly saved the entire city from the threat of starvation forevermore.
Brent had to admit that, like many others who had chosen combat Classes, he had somewhat dismissed Classes like ‘Farmer’ as extremely sub-optimal, borderline suicidal Class choices. But there was a reason those Nature Affinity Farmer Classes were of Rare rarity and not lower, the same grade Mia’s ridiculous Arcane Mage Class was.
Then there were the other Classes that fit the theme of the ‘farmer’: Animal Handlers, Animal Breeders, and Farmers with Skills that focused on animals.
Brent led the trainees towards the new animal pens, a massive building that was among the first Mark had constructed in his new role as a builder. It was reinforced by his Earth magic, and for good reason: it didn’t hold simple animals, but monsters.
Once the Rift that’d been dubbed the ‘Critter Rift’ had been taken care of, a few of the civilians floated the idea of trying to capture, tame and breed some of the escaped critter monsters for their meat. It’d been dismissed as an idea at first, until Gabriel arrived and gave them confirmation that the practice was a thing in the Mystic Realm.
Alas, it was not nearly as simple as magical crop framing. Wild monsters needed to go through a few dozen generations to shed their miasmic taint and become regular, much less murderous magical creatures with edible meat, or other produce.
Brent stepped through the large stone doorway, seemingly lacking a door, feeling the barrier Gabriel had anchored to the doorframe let him through. His ‘energy signature’ or whatnot had been added to the facility's central wardstone’s whitelist. He placed his hand into the palm-shaped indent in the wall, causing the barrier to retreat, then waved the recruits through before pulling his hand away and letting the barrier snap back into place.
Gabriel had truly been a godsend in helping set this place up and turning what might have been a bloody process of trial and error costing dozens of lives into something that bordered on the tedious. His barriers made sure no monster escaped their pens while the wards covering said pens did something to sap the monsters of most of their strength and stamina. They were still more dangerous than regular animals of the same size and a dozen times more bloodthirsty, but no longer beyond an experienced farmhand’s ability to handle. Although they needed to be careful lest they lose a finger or an eye, something which was a concerningly common occurrence as of late even with every precaution they’d taken.
They passed by a few farmhands going about their errands, a handful of scholarly types still struggling to rebuild their worldviews after it’d been shattered, and then they reached the first animal pen. It was entirely indoors, though the ceiling had been removed on account of the animals apparently needing sunlight. There was a wire net, metal bars above it and, above it all, another one of Gabriel’s barriers, just to be sure.
Going into the pen, one would have to pass through two separate barriers of the same type anchored to tough metal walls and reinforced doors. If the animal slipped through one door when a handler was stepping through, they would just get stuck between the two layers.
Brent glanced at the plaque on the door, almost snorting at what was written on it: Devil’s Hens & Satan’s Cock.
They had a proper name, something innocuous and fancy-sounding, but anyone that’d had the displeasure of having to handle them agreed the nickname was much more apt for the little menaces. People had to get their amusement from somewhere, and no one who had the power to stop it thought it’d be prudent to rob the people working here and risking their lives of one of their scant few sources of amusement. Regular chickens were bad enough, as anyone who’d dealt with them before could tell, and they couldn’t peck through solid metal. Or breathe fire.
Sure, the fire breath was about as powerful as a kid who figured out what a bodyspray and a pocket lighter could do when put together, but it still meant that almost all their handlers were without eyebrows after just a few days of dealing with them. Their beaks were much more dangerous, being able to peck out one’s eyes or bite off a finger if one wasn’t careful.
Yes, these would do. Brent thought with a chuckle as he turned towards his trainees. They were nearly all Level 1, with not a single one above Level 3. They needed to get their hands bloody, and they needed experience fighting monsters in the most controlled environment possible. At the same time, the demonic chicken bred almost as fast as the horned rabbits a few pens over and were in dire need of a culling. A match made in heaven. With Gabriel’s wards weakening them, the chickens are about as close to harmless as any monster could be.
“Today, many of you will finally get your first experience fighting monsters,” Brent said, easily projecting his voice to resound far enough to be heard even by the farthest trainees. “Many of you grew up in this city, far from anything that would have required you to kill, or even get your hands bloody. Some of you’ve had little choice and had to fight for your lives to survive, but most of you haven’t, and we are here today in part to make sure you won’t freeze at the sight of blood, or vomit all over yourselves when you are first forced to end a life. So! You have all been drafted to help kill and butcher some of our demonic chickens. If you are lucky, some of you might even leave a Level higher by the time we are done.”
He doubted it. Gabriel’s wards would be doing most of the work, and the System apparently rewarded struggle, danger and risk-taking, all of which Brent had done his best to minimise without going so far as to hold down a chicken himself for each recruit as they worked up the courage to kill them. Still, some of these trainees might have been close enough to their first Level Up for this to tip them over the edge. He could only hope.
“Well, who wants to go first?” Brent asked, then smiled. “I’ve heard some of these chickens are tenth-generation monsters, which is where their meat becomes edible. I might be able to convince the concerned authorities to let those of you who impress me go home with the beasts you’ve killed and butchered.”
With the ‘concerned authorities’ in question being Brent himself, he could deliver on that promise. He almost snorted when he saw the hard eyes of his trainees light up at the mere thought of getting some fresh chicken meat; many of these kids grew up being able to buy it in stores whenever they wanted, and going without for a few weeks made them crave meat.
And now they are motivated; hopefully it’ll be enough that none of them chicken out … hmm, I should use that pun somehow. I’m sure I’ll get the opportunity.