Of Losses and Acquisitions

The unending tempest’s fury began to subside as the Living Prison melted away to dust. Sky-shattering cracks of thunder settled back to simple grumbles, the sky’s anger placated for the time being. Winds evened out to a gentle stillness. The torrential downpour of rain gradually came to an end, tapering off to nothing.

Rather than an opulent shower of lights, this boss faded away to a single large sack, with a vibrant green light shooting from the top. Nearby, where it had dropped its armaments, the copper-bounded shield and sword began to emit a brilliant orange gold light, which spread slightly and flickered almost like a flame as it drifted upwards. It didn’t take a degree in rocket science to judge that those were legendary drops.

The Gamer wandered over to the center of the room, eyes adjusting to the dimming light. His UI flashed and danced with color, celebrating a level up both for himself and for his blonde companion. He felt strange, thinking back over the fight. While he was satisfied with the victory, obviously, he was not entirely happy with having had to leave Ela to exchange blows with such a monstrosity while he ran around doing mechanics.

’I suppose that’s kinda how these things have to work,’ he thought. ’Somebody’s gotta do the mechs. Might be nice if I had some other ranged support options… or if we had more party members.’

Leaving his thoughts on the future behind, the nerd approached his blonde companion, who still stood in the open part of the room. Golden light once more enveloped her, though she took no notice. Her eyes were closed, her face skyward, as she hugged her sister’s shield to her chest. A soft smile played on her lips, and she let out a satisfied sigh before finally relaxing.

“All good?” John asked, coming to stand next to her. “Heh. I feel like I’m asking that question a lot today.”

She blinked her eyes open, all traces of flaming green gone, replaced by her natural ocean blue. “I do appreciate the concern. Your powers were as thorough this time as last.”

“Glad to hear it. That was a pretty impressive display of defense there.”

“There are a lot of knights that could do better,” she said, turning to him with a smile, “but I am pretty happy with that. Maybe I am less rusty than I thought. Your intuition about the fight seems to have been accurate as well.”

“Close enough, at least.” He chuckled, shrugging. “I guess it worked, so I can’t complain.”

A brute **** solution is still a solution.

’That’s true,’ The Gamer conceded. “Anyway, I guess we ought to pick up and move on? If it’s anything like the last dungeon, it should be fairly smooth sailing up to the end.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Ela said, allowing a slightly somber tinge to dull her speech as the blonde looked down in front of her.

Unlike the Living Prison and the other monsters that had come before it, the body of the girl that had been trapped did not turn to dust. Instead, she remained behind, flat on the floor where she had fallen from the monster's clutches. Water from the storm pooled around her - a very tragic sight in John's opinion. He struggled between anger, sadness, and nausea as he took in the ruinous damage done to her.

As the lanky nerd paused to come to grips with what he was seeing, his companion walked forward and knelt down next to the body, setting her precious shield aside. Gingerly, she rolled the girl over onto her back, settling her into a more dignified position. The tattered remains of her armor rattled as steel plates settled against the broken tile of the atrium.

Ela frowned as she carefully wiped the blood away from the girl’s face. Raising her hand slightly, she exhaled, channeling her mana until a faint green glow appeared.

“Is something wrong?” John asked, reacting to his companion’s change in demeanor.

The Pole turned to him, a pained, but confused look in her eyes. “I- I think she was still alive during our fight.”

“What?” he said in disbelief, looking at the state of her injuries. “How was she not already dead?”

“That thing must have been keeping her alive… a living prison, not a tomb.”

“I- can- is there anything we can do?” John stammered, struggling to find the words he needed. “Can we heal her or something?”

The Gamer fell to his knees next to his companion, casting [Observe] and activating his [Unawakened Eye], hoping to find anything helpful. As he transitioned into mana-sensitive vision, he found a flickering amber light within the girl - the faintest spark of mana, the same color as the lighthouse’s beacon, clinging to life.

John looked up from the last line of information with his stomach in his throat. He watched as her golden ember faded, drifting off into the distance. The Gamer bit his lip as his heart sank. He hadn’t ever known the girl, nor had he expected to have the opportunity to save her, but any sign of life in this dead world was precious.

“I think her fate was sealed as soon as we slew the monster. Her body was not receptive to any of my attempts to heal it,” Ela answered somberly. “I hope that freedom from her prison is mercy enough.”

John cut off his spells, unsure of what to say. An arm wrapped itself around him, pulling him in close to his companion. She was warm and soft and a welcome relief from the cold of the storm and the sorrow that lay in front of them. They sat there for a few minutes, as the sullen nerd tried to process an actual **** occurring in front of him.

“Are you OK?” she whispered in his ear.

He swallowed. “Yeah, I think so… I don’t know why I’m getting emotional over someone I never knew. We don’t even know if we could have helped her.”

“It is a good thing to have a strong desire to help. **** should never come easily,” Ela said, squeezing him.

John nodded as the pair stood. “Can we bury her before we leave the dungeon?”

“Of course.” She smiled. “Come on, we should gather the drops and get moving.”

The Gamer was glad to try and take his mind off things, allowing his data brain to roll over his emotional one for the time being. He started by grabbing the nearby green sack, which was filled with more than a thousand dollars. Watching in satisfaction as the money racked up in his inventory, John walked over to pick up the sword and shield from where they’d fallen.

The blade was still in immaculate condition, made of recovered steel that had been painted black and accented with copper. The crossguard had been wrapped with copper and gold wires in an attempt to give it an intricate, noble appearance. In the middle of said guard was embedded a brilliant blue gem, faintly glowing gold from within, a half sphere of silver wrapped around the side.

’Hopefully she won’t mind us using her sword,’ he thought with a grimace. ’She did a great job decorating it, but it still isn’t really my speed. Might come in handy in a pinch though.’

With that, The Gamer extracted what he knew was a skill gem from the hilt before passing the sword and its window over to his companion for her to inspect it.

John smiled. ’Now that is nice. I’m not sure it’s actually better than my healing ability in terms of raw efficacy, but it’ll raise my total eHP if I need. I wonder how they’d stack if I could get them both leveled…

’Wait a second,’ he thought. ’Was this what the boss was doing?’

Possibly.

’I wonder if that means we could have bypassed the shield entirely by disarming it… or if the shield could have been overwhelmed by a big enough hit. The boss only had a hundred mana.’

Who knows? I know.

John chose to ignore that, deciding that it didn’t matter much now that the creature was dead. He looked over to where Ela was waving the sword around, gauging its balance. She rolled the sword around in her hand, spinning it around until it came to rest with its blade pointing towards him.

“The quality of this weapon is impressive, considering the conditions under which it must have been made.”

“You want it?” the loot-collecting nerd asked with a shrug. “I’m not exactly a warrior myself.”

She gestured to her axe, resting at her side. “I have no need for another weapon, nor the shield. Keep them, just in case.”

“Gotcha. Guess a backup plan it is.”

With that settled, John walked over and picked up the matching shield that went with the blade. It bore the scars of many battles, though they’d each been carefully filled and polished to preserve its clean face. Similar copper accents as had been on the sword’s hilt bordered the scrap steel body.

It was surprisingly heavy, and it shimmered slightly in the light. A simple sketch of a crow had been worn into the inside leather lining. An empty gem socket sat where the bird’s eye should have been.

’An appropriate match, I suppose. I wonder what happened to whatever gem used to be in here? Could I use a shield with a magic focus? Maybe something to test once I get my old one back from Moira.’

With the only drops sorted and stored away, John took one more look at the body of the girl that had been trapped in the prison.. Morgan had been her name. He wanted to remember that, if nothing else.

“Sorry, I took a bit of time going through a couple things there,” John said, turning to his Polish companion. “What should we do first, burial or looking for the executive room?”

Ela took a second to mull that over. “We should bury her first, in case we find anything else deeper in this hospital. I can carry her downstairs and out the side. We can find a nice place behind the building.”

He nodded solemnly. “Alright, let’s do it.”

---

It didn’t take very long for the pair to make their way back through the hospital. The smothering darkness which covered the floor seemed to have mellowed out now that the boss had been vanquished, leaving little more than the rumbling of the storm above to disturb their journey. John had been silent and contemplative, still off-kilter from the sudden confrontation with mortality.

Without many means for a proper burial, he had carved a small area out of the ground with his [Reshape Matter], on the nicest open area they could find behind the hospital. Then, he’d drawn out stone, forming a makeshift coffin for her as best he could underground. Without much else to do as ceremony, Ela had laid the other woman to rest. Using his alchemy again, John sealed the grave again before raising a simple metal pillar from the earth to mark it.

It wasn’t much, but it did make him feel better.

---

Now, the two found themselves working their way back through the hospital again, headed towards their initial goal of finding the executive section. John’s mind was far more at ease now that they’d completed their side task. While they worked through empty corridor after empty corridor, The Gamer took stock of everything he’d gained and unlocked during their venture.

First, he double checked his achievements, he’d just earned one a minute ago, and had one lying around from back before Ela had woken up. In his panic to get away, he’d completely overlooked it.

’First one’s pretty nice. It was just kinda the right thing to do though, not that I’m complaining about the reward,’ he thought, closing the first window. ’What’s up with the second one, though? A bunch of question marks? Guess I got some kind of secret reward?’

Congratulations on your fantastic powers of deduction.

’OK, listen. It’s been a long day.’

I’d be more willing to give you that one if you didn’t have magic powers keeping your body all together, but I’ll chock it up to that WIS score of yours.

’Speaking of… I leveled up, so I can actually work on that one. Three more points in WIS gives me an even twenty. I would have gone for two more in Endurance as well, but the achievement already evened me out there.’

He scratched the back of his neck, trying to remember his upgrade analysis from before they’d entered the dungeon. ’Wasn’t there something else that needed to be raised? I know I needed a ton of INT and WIS for my eyes, but- oh, yeah. 25 END did something for my healing. I could maybe try and hit that anyway to see if I get more health scaling.’

Committing his points, John emerged from his own little world. The pair had returned to the atrium at this point, slowly making their way up the stairs on the far side towards the upper floors of the hospital. The corruption was much less evident up above, the ooze and flesh seemingly having been burned away at some point. Ruin was still the predominant theme, though some of the rooms appeared to have been cleaned up. The Gamer guessed that these upper areas might have been what the survivors had used in the past.

Gradually, operating rooms and waiting areas turned into office spaces and storage rooms. The objective text on the side slowly changed from reaching the executive wing to finding the director’s office. That turned out to be easier than it sounded since the top floor was relatively small, mostly composed of a single long hallway of offices, leading to a large suite.

From here, the grumbling of the storm was the loudest it had been, rattling aging windows in their frames. Lightning flashed through the glass, casting warped silhouettes as they walked towards their destination. A strange pressure had settled upon the building.

The director’s suite was the final room at the far end of the hall, behind a set of wooden doors that had once been impressive, but now were soft and faded. Their hinges creaked with time and rust as Ela pulled them open. A wave of half fresh, half musty air rushed to meet them as they entered. Crossing the threshold, The Gamer watched as his quest text flashed a golden color, sparkling away to nothing.

He flushed at that, choosing to ignore the implication for now. ’Come on. It’s been so long since I’ve had a good friend. I don’t need to ruin things.’

The room was fairly quaint, with a pair of reasonably usable chairs on one end and a couch on the other, set up next to a large desk. It was filled from wall to wall with cabinets and containers, filled with piles of documents and pictures and other such things.

“Holy cow… It would take hours to try and look through all of this…” John muttered, looking around. “This has gotta have more stuff than the room in the lighthouse.”

Ela walked over to the desk, searching for anything obviously important. “Perhaps they were able to move many of their things here after the lighthouse was lost.”

“Hmm… could be. Maybe they just kept backups at the other locations.”

John joined his friend over at the desk, finding a smaller version of the city map they’d taken from the lighthouse, with different markings. Next to it lay a small pile of books and charts. This map appeared to be a record of a series of attempts to enter the military base on the far end of the city. Several paths were crossed out, and various symbols marked each failure.

“You see a legend anywhere?” he asked, scanning the tabletop again.

Ela shook her head. “No. I would assume that either it wasn’t written down or it is somewhere amongst all these books.”

“Great. Not like I have enough homework from Ashcroft already.”

That got a giggle out of his companion. “Well, there will be plenty of time to try and figure things out before returning. It is not like you have to come back right away.”

“Yeah, I suppose so,” John said. “Can you hand me that stack over there? I’ll take back the few on the table, so maybe I can try and work some things out.”

The pair spent some time collecting things that looked important, packing away the large map and a few seemingly related books nearby for research. It seemed like they’d been decently thorough in documenting their exploration of how the city had settled, which was quite fortunate, since The Gamer assumed that they would be returning next time.

’Next time…’ he trailed off in thought. “Hey, Ela?”

The blonde looked up from a chart. “Hmm..?”

“Thanks for coming along. This would have been a nightmare alone.”

“It still looks like a bit of a nightmare to me,” she sang, smiling softly as she looked out a window at the ruins, “but yes, while I am not sure that I would use the word ‘fun,’ I have appreciated my time here. Thank you for sating my curiosity.”

’Alright, come on, John, put some of that new Charisma to use…’ He swallowed nervously, adjusting his feet. “So, uh, does that mean you might be interested in doing another one of these? I, um- I’m pretty sure you should be able to keep leveling up, a-and we can split all the drops and stuff…”

“John,” she interrupted him. “Yes, I think that I would be willing to do another, but not today. I also think we should work on a few things first. Perhaps I can show you how to run properly.”

He beamed. “Yeah, that sounds great, but, uh… is there a ‘right’ way to run?”

She laughed heartily at his confusion. “Let’s get out of here. We can talk about it when we are home.”