Three Times is Enemy Action

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Once again, Christie needed a bathroom break halfway through the not-quite-D&D session, leaving John alone with Lord Chastain-Wessel. Like last week, the Abyssal nobleman’s nameplate switched from the mundane passing display to the unquestionably Abyssal version.

After a moment of neither saying anything, John was uncertain if Lord Chastain-Wessel had anticipated that John had something Abyss related to say, or if he was simply signalling that the opportunity existed.

Regardless, John did have something to say. “I have something that I would like permission to give one or more of to Christie. Something magical.” As he spoke, he retrieved a lesser rare candy from his inventory and placed it on the table.

The sigilcaster looked at the candy for a moment with an unreadable expression, then returned his gaze to the Gamer. “To the best of your knowledge, what is this and what do you hope to accomplish by giving Christie one?”

“It’s called a rare candy. By my Ability’s terminology, it will cause the person who eats it to Level Up-” he gestured at his character sheet. “-as long as their Level is below 15. From what I’ve seen, doing so means becoming a better version of yourself, broadly speaking, but with little fanfare. Unless you know what to pay attention to, you basically just discover that things are easier than they used to be as you try them.

“According to my Ability’s way of parsing assensing, Christie is Level 2. At minimum, it should be a big help to her making the most of what she can do despite her blindness or towards working around it but… You said that she isn’t protected by the Veil. That sounds to me like she’ll probably have to deal with the Abyss sooner or later, and even with your protection, I imagine being as strong as possible herself is best when that happens. The feeble races seem to cap out around Level 15, and most of everyone else seems to be above Level 20. If I can help her close that gap in advance, even a little…”

“I see.” He picked up the candy and looked at it more closely. “I assume you’re aware that a great many people in the Abyss would be willing to pay a very large amount of money for something like this?”

“Yes. And also that even if the money was worth more to me than helping a friend, in a way that money likely has a hard time buying since you haven’t already done so, putting it up for auction would paint a huge target on my back for anyone interested in controlling the supply.”

“And yet, you are willing to risk revealing that you can make such things to me.”

“Frankly, I half expected you to already know. I know you’ve had your familiar shadow Christie at least part of the time, and given your ability to manipulate assensing results, the fact that it was even possible for me to learn was clearly by design. For all I know, you could’ve had me shadowed from the moment I offered to buy her lunch last Monday, and I’d currently have no way of doing anything about it.

“But in the event that you didn’t, you obviously consider Christie’s wellbeing a priority, and however you may otherwise feel about me, I’m fairly certain that my friendship with her has been a boon to that. Turning me into a **** would pretty much inevitably strain it, in order to control the supply of something I am already offering for free. That seems like a waste of effort, and you don’t strike me as the sort of person who’s fond of wasting effort.”

Lord Chastain-Wessel’s mouth curved upwards ever so slightly and his RS changed from 1 to 2. John was unsure if it was the flattering remark at the end or the rationale as a whole that was met with approval, though he was fairly sure that insincere or overdone flattery would, at best, get him nowhere with the Abyssal businessman.

The nobleman reached into his pocket with his free hand, retrieving a set of goggles with multiple, inscribed lenses of various colors each set on a moveable arm that could align them with the goggles’ main lenses or move them out of the way. While John wouldn’t have doubted that they were magical off hand, them being legendary was a good bit more than he had expected. Especially given the unceremonious handling.

He was uncertain if the glitters showing at all was an invitation to Observe them or if Lord Chastain-Wessel would be annoyed by that, as he was one of the few people who had seemed able to tell when he used that Skill. Before he had come to a conclusion, the older Abyssal had flickered for a moment, then put the goggles away again. John noted off-handedly that the goggles didn’t fit in the shirt pocket they had come from and gone back into, but a pocket space here was wholly unsurprising.

“The offer is appreciated, but I can’t determine with certainty that it’s safe to take it at this point. It likely is, however, and data from a test or two, ideally one mundane subject and one Abyssal subject, could produce a definitive answer. If that’s not an option, I am willing to pay you to keep some in storage until it is safe for my daughter to partake.”

John scratched the back of his head. “Well, I was planning on giving my mom one or two as well. Not sure about the data collection though… As for testing on an Abyssal, I’m fresh out of associates in the Level range and I’d rather not give them to random people.”

“So you have already put some to use then?”

“Not exactly…” He paused, uncertain of how much more to say. Then again, as he had said himself before, he couldn’t realistically stop Lord Chastain-Wessel from finding out if he really wanted to anyway. “It’s not the only way to Level Up through my Ability, but the other one is… not subtle.”

“I see. I would be interested in assensing this person regardless. Especially if they have already been pushed past the usual limits of their kind. As for collecting data from your mother…” He took out a blank piece of paper from behind the GM’s screen and handed it to John along with the rare candy. In the process, lines and writing appeared on it turning it into a one page questionnaire form. At the same time, it went from no magic item glitter to epic rarity to still showing the occasional spark of the particle effect but no more than one point of glitter visible at a time.The actual text on the document looked like a bog-standard one-page feedback form for taste testing a potential new line of candy.

‘A Level 100 epic item that fast and casually?!? Even as a consumable, that’s fucking insane. Either crossing the Level 100 line is an even bigger deal than I thought or he’s still hiding his real Observe result behind some bullshit!’

Before he had time to comment anything to that, or any other, effect, Lord Chastain-Wessel’s nameplate reverted to the mundane-passing information. He quickly put away the candy and the enchanted form, assuming that this meant Christie was about to return.

On his way home from the game, John entered the Barrier Alley leading from the park to the exit near his house and found himself face to face with a lesser rat ogre.

The beast tried to grab him and he just barely managed to evade backwards. As it roared in frustration, he tried to leave the Alley again.

Error: Current location does not correspond with an Earth or Kingdom location. Forcible exit will deposit you in the Unformed Dream.

’Shit!’ John had no idea what the Unformed Dream was, but he was willing to bet getting tossed into it blind was bad. That left him with only the option of beating the rat ogre and he did not like his chances.

Despite being a higher level than it, and almost certainly more agile, it was still stronger and tougher by a large margin. If he had had space to maneuver, he could have tried to kite it or at least circle it and keep its angle of attack poor while whittling away at it. He could probably keep that up well enough to win. But in a narrow corridor with no terrain obstructions, this was either a battle of brawn or of who could run fastest. Or whether the shotgun could kill it before it took two steps, but that seemed unlikely.

That left him with a trump card as the only option, and the only one he had on hand that might do the trick was the hedgeslug slime. With the speed of thought, he loaded all of it into the Alchemfist and sprayed it just as the rat ogre broke into a run, seemingly intent on just barreling him over.

Taking effect even faster than anticipated, the AGI penalty on the already graceless creature saw it miss its step and fall on its face. It still almost fell on top of John due to forward momentum, but he barely managed to squeeze tightly against the wall of the Barrier Alley and avoid that.

He immediately stepped over its leg and returned to the spot where the alley overlapped the park and left. Even in the evening, there were enough people around that if it followed him, it would quickly start disintegrating due to the Veil. And it gave him space to maneuver against the now heavily debuffed beast.

After a moment of waiting for the rat ogre to follow him, he realized that it wasn’t going to and the mental wheels started spinning. This was the third time in less than two weeks that he ran into one or more rat ogres at random. Which made them a massive outlier since most other threats had been in his own dungeons. In other words, it wasn’t at random. ’Someone is sending rat ogres after me. Except… the first one was ignoring me until I provoked it. It was going after-’ “-Qhila!”

He immediately broke into a sprint towards the alley entrance leading to her nest, paying no heed to the fact that him running around in his mismatched battle gear knocking people aside would draw attention. He only realized after the fact that it was lucky that he broke line of sight by taking a shortcut through a cluster of shrubs. Otherwise, it might have been difficult to actually enter the Alley.

Thankfully, it held no rat ogres, but that was only scarce comfort. The dash down the alley was a blur, as was the shorter one from the alley entrance in the industrial district to where Qhila’s nest was located.

Upon entry, his nose was immediately assailed by the smell of gunpowder and burnt flesh. The manhole leading to her nest was open, as the cover was embedded in the skull of a dead rat ogre lying next to it.

Shotgun barrel first, he peered into the hole, but could see little. There was some sort of lumpy something down there that wasn’t usually present, but the lights were out. With a flick, he produced and triggered one of the alchemical glowsticks he had made for practice’s sake, dropping it into the nest.

The lumpy shapes were two more dead rat ogres. Based on where they lay, they had triggered the frag grenade trap that had seemed so excessive to him on his first visit. One grenade likely wasn’t enough to take a rat ogre down, at least not immediately and reliably, but it had been rigged up with some other stuff that had clearly combined into enough to do the trick.

It took a small exercise of willpower to climb down the hole instead of jumping, but he wasn’t sure he could afford to risk losing HP to a bad landing. With a better viewing angle, he could see large, fresh burns on them explaining the stench. But he scarcely had time to register that, before the screech of twisting metal blew away any thought of caution. He barely had enough presence of mind to pick up the glowstick as he went.

The next room had bloodsplatter, scorch marks, and shrapnel damage, but no creatures, living or dead. Then he reached Qhila’s combined living room and bedroom, with the books, bee knicknacks, and the hidden stash of plushies. It was in utter disarray, with two rat ogres at one third and two thirds HP remaining respectively, in the process of forcing their way through. They were much too large to fit through the spaces that were barely big enough for John, instead using brute strength to bend and break piping and fixtures to get through.

Qhila was standing in the doorway to her lab. Aside from the fact that she was upright and moving, John only took note of her not being in his line of fire before dropping the glowstick and mag dumping into the rat ogres. The more injured one straight up collapsed into a heap of dead mutant. The other one hit negative HP but kept moving, turning towards John and lunging.

With Qhila if not fine then at least well enough to move and to fight, and an enemy now in front of him in the flesh rather than vaguely “ahead”, the worry that had been boiling in him changed into white hot fury. Fury at the beasts that had violated her nest aiming to do gods knew what to his Qhila.

His fist met the rat ogre’s head on, shattering the bones in his arm. But the Alchemfist’s injection spike and a dose of acid ruined the beast’s hand and John’s bones reformed quickly.

In addition to briefly wrecking his arm, the hit had knocked John in between a pump and some piping. The rat ogre couldn’t fit in there, but its leg could reach just fine for a kick that John narrowly avoided by sliding in behind the pump.

The rat ogre retracted its leg and slammed against the pump, trying to squeeze its head in far enough to bite off his face. It couldn’t quite make it and roared in frustrated anger at him. John took the opportunity to send a spray of alchemist’s fire directly down its throat.

Spewing and screeching, it backed off a little bit. Then it was knocked flat on its ass as slick frost covered the concrete at its feet. Qhila’s work, no doubt. The beast being robbed of its footing bought John time to reposition, reload the shotgun and finish it off. As best he could tell, it stopped moving around when it crossed -100 HP.

Foes felled, John rushed to Qhila and picked her up into a hug. At first, she reciprocated but after a few moments she signalled to pull back. “I have to pack.”

“Pack?” John reluctantly knelt to put her down. Even then, he couldn’t bring himself to let go entirely, leaving his hands resting lightly on her hips so he could still feel that she was there. That he hadn’t lost her.

“I can’t stay here, there might be more rat ogres coming. Or something worse. I need to pack my things, minus whatever got ruined, and figure out how to make a new nest.” Despite the urgency in her tone and circumstances, she didn’t step away and get started yet.

“How to? Can’t you make a barrier copy of another bit of sewer?”

She shook her head. “I can’t selectively exclude the sewage. I bought a Fateweaver Kalyx, but I can’t afford another one. I can’t make barriers that big or in shapes other than a sphere either, but I can work around that by making the edges overlap so they meld. If I can use the alchemy jug for it, scouting out somewhere with a suitable cellar should be doable…”

“I see the problem. And I think I have a much easier solution.” Despite the situation, he couldn’t suppress a smile.