Of Equipment and Ideas

John looked around at the Order’s armory again, considering everything available to him.

These walls held far more options for weaponry than he had any idea what to do with - more than he could even hope to name. The Gamer thought back to his first dungeon, when he’d nearly broken his wrist trying to stab a zombie. His stats had gotten at least a little better since then, but he still had no actual training.

’I guess I did alright with that scrap spear thing, but the bar is below ground at this point,’ he thought, looking over at his two companions. ’I’m probably better off sticking to spells and leaving that to the experts.'

Moira and Ela stood a few feet to his side, discussing their options.

“Hmm…” the Bookworm Knight hummed, her green eyes flicking back and forth over the rack in front of her. “What would you say qualifies as ‘reasonable’ for us to be taking with us?”

“Considering that I am going on this expedition,” Moira replied, crossing her arms, “I doubt that my father will object to the use of anything from a standard armory like this.

The blonde nodded. “That makes sense. Still, I do not intend to request too much. ”

“It is better for us to be overprepared, rather than underprepared,” Moira reassured her. “Especially since we do not know for sure what all we will face.”

Ela nodded, thinking silently for a moment before she spoke. “What about you? Do you intend to take anything else?”

The Warden shook her head. “No. My hammer was made for me specifically, and is well suited to how I fight. If I require more range, I have holy magic that I can call upon.”

“I wish that I could say the same,” Ela replied, wistfully. “I was always hopeless with destructive spells. If I want to hit anything out of reach of my weapon, I have to throw it.”

“We all have our strengths,” Moira said. “I have never been particularly adept with the healing aspects of my powers. Not like you are with your abilities.”

The blonde raised an eyebrow at that. “I doubt that my healing is better than yours.”

“It takes a lot of energy for me to heal - far more mana than it should,” the Warden replied with a shrug. “I need a lot more practice.”

“Well, maybe I can help, sometime,” Ela said, cheerfully.

John smiled, looking over at the two as they continued to converse. The two had become fast friends at some point while he’d been **** the previous day. The camaraderie seemed good for them both.

Leaving them to their devices, The Gamer turned towards the wall, lined with various sets of armor. He still didn’t have a properly matching set of gear, and what he did have was still largely the scrap he’d picked up from his dungeon. Beyond even that, while the Order had been kind enough to clean the blood and ash from his equipment the previous day, they hadn’t fixed the damage done to it.

There was a very conspicuous hole just below his right shoulder where a bullet had ripped through the plate and into his arm. He shuddered, only able to vaguely recall the moments before he’d crashed the car.

John looked at all the suits of armor in front of him, from plate to chainmail to modern body armor. He immediately dismissed the heavier metal sets as un-wearable for him. He had little idea what modern armor weighed, but he assumed that the bulkier sets that looked to have some kind of plating within were probably impractical for him as well. Which left him stumped as he looked around from heavy set to heavy set.

’They are knights, I suppose. Guess that makes sense… That’s a decent reason to keep leveling Strength, even if I’m some weird caster build, for now,’ he thought, stepping towards the wall to get a closer look. ’As far as I can tell, there’s nothing that’s stopping me from being a full plate wizard someday. Guess I don’t know if there’s such a thing as “proficiency” with armor that I’d need.’

“See anything?” an inquiring voice asked from behind him.

John finally managed not to jump as he was brought out of his thoughts. Turning, he found Ela behind him alone, Moira having disappeared off somewhere else in the room.

“Eh, not sure.” He shrugged, gesturing to the hole in his armor. “My equipment isn’t exactly in great shape at this point. Unfortunately, it doesn’t regenerate like I do. I’m not sure what all I could even wear, but I feel like I ought to get something.”

“When Moira gets back, we can ask her,” Ela said, looking over the armor that lined the wall. “I am not as familiar with armor as I am with weapons.”

John scrunched his eyes and looked around. “Where did she go? I didn’t even hear her walk off.”

The Bookworm Knight giggled, shaking her head. “That is because you were lost in thought again. She went to get some bags to help us pack everything up.”

“You’ve got a final list of stuff to try, then?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Well,” she sang, sweetly. “I would love to try bringing a tank, but I do not think that we could fit one in your inventory.”

He let out a hearty laugh at that one. “That would be something, but I can’t even imagine what Strength stat I’d need to be able to store fifty tons. That’d be a fun surprise to be able to drop out of nowhere, though.”

“Maybe someday,” Ela said.

“Maybe someday.” He nodded.

Moira returned as the couple completed their exchange, appearing from behind a far rack of swords. She had with her a deep red duffel bag of similar design to Ela’s, as well as a hefty-looking metal gun case held under her arm, easily long enough to fit the greatsword John had gotten from the Lighthouse Keeper. He guessed that she must have gone to some sort of back room to look for those.

“What did I miss?” the Warden called, walking over to join them.

“Not much,” The Gamer said with a shrug. “I’m just looking at some armor, potentially, since mine is in pretty bad shape. Ela recommended that I ask you about it now that you’re back.”

Moira nodded, looking between the two. “I am sure that we can find something suitable.

“Here,” she continued, handing the bag to John. “We can talk while we pack up everything that Ela and I discussed before.”

Over the next half hour, the trio set to work organizing everything that they needed from the armory before they departed.

Ela took charge of the weapon case, as she was the only one looking for an array of weapons to bring with. Though it had a very plain and durable exterior, the case’s inside had plenty of room for various armaments, all lined with soft foam so that nothing would shake around in transit - not that The Gamer’s powers would have allowed that anyway.

From the armory, the Bookworm Knight selected some manner of heavy gauge shotgun that John didn’t recognize, as well as a blessed claymore. Those she placed gently within the metal case; she only intended to swap her axe for one of them if they found themselves fighting large groups again.

In addition to those, she also picked up a pair of simple holy daggers - one to replace the plain knife she kept in her armored boot, and the other to insist The Gamer take as a backup option. As inept as he’d been with a knife before, John still conceded that having the option was worth the single pound more of weight strapped to his leg.

As for the issue of his damaged armor, Moira recommended a mix of old and new pieces. The Order didn’t keep much, if any, armor around that would qualify as light to someone of very painfully below average mundane strength, so she thought it would be easier just to focus on fixing the gap in his chest and shoulder with what they did have.

For that, she’d dug up a thick mesh shirt, made of some Abyssal kevlar blend, if he understood her explanation correctly. It wasn’t all that different in design from the shirt Ela had let him borrow for their dungeon run a couple days ago, though it was clearly a much newer version made for actual combat. One big difference was that it was long sleeve, so he was able to let it run down his forearms while still keeping his scrap gloves and remaining shoulder plate on.

“Normally,” she’d said, handing it over to him, “our knights would wear full plate or mail armor over the top of this, but, still, even alone it is well suited to absorbing hits, and it should be very difficult for any normal undead to be able to bite or claw through it.”

He’d smiled wryly as he responded. “I’ll try not to test that.”

With their arms and armor sorted, the trio then moved on to the theory that Ela was most excited to test. As far as she could tell, both from exploring and reading about the world of the dungeon, the storm that ruled the skies above may not have broken in years.

The monsters of the world, then, were likely adapted to that unending darkness - used to hunting in the black of the rain. If they were still using their senses in any conventional way, Ela believed that the monsters might be extremely susceptible to being overwhelmed with light.

“Do zombies actually, uh, see like that?” John asked, thinking back over all the movies and games he’d experienced. “What if the corpse they were raised from didn’t have eyes anymore?”

“It depends on the kind of undead,” Moira answered. “Some risen are more creatures of magic than flesh.”

“Well, if anything, I can definitely say that there’s a lot of flesh in the dungeon…” The Gamer muttered in reply, thinking back to the squirming black tendrils that had held together the more fearsome creatures he’d faced so far. “Lots of flesh and lots of blood…”

“Which is why,” Ela interjected, pulling a box down from a high shelf, “I think that these may work.”

The Bookworm Knight had found a whole box of flashbang grenades.

“Even if they do not have eyes to blind,” she continued, “these may still disorient them by throwing off the balance in their inner ear.”

“That seems worth a try,” Moira said, nodding at the blonde.

John frowned, thinking through things in his head. “You know, isn’t this all getting a little loud? It’s a pretty classic trope in games and movies for loud sounds to be a trigger for large zombie hordes. The storm isn’t gonna muffle everything.”

“That is a reasonable concern,” Ela said, setting the box down by the weapon crate.

“I’m not saying that we shouldn’t bring any of it,” he clarified. “I’m just saying that we should be careful when we use this stuff.”

Moira nodded. “As long as I am understanding your inventory’s ability to transport everything correctly, then we may as well bring the option along with us, as long as we are cautious in its application.”

“Agreed,” the Bookworm Knight said, smiling. “Here, help me pack these up and then we can get some less destructive sources of light.”

Together, the three moved around the armory, filling the duffel bag with various sources of light, from stick flares and flare guns to reflective tape and luminescent chalk, anything that might make things easier for them and harder for the monsters. Several of these also doubled as being useful for marking notable areas of the world for future ventures, if necessary.

With a little effort, they managed to get everything they wanted into the single case and duffel that Moira had brought out before. The former was still heavy enough that it took up two slots, but John figured that three slots total, plus probably one more for the food bag, was reasonable, and left a few slots for loot in the dungeon.

Once they were done with that, their gear gathering was finally complete, and the trio departed the armory together, heading upstairs to a training room to wait for Reginald and finish preparing for departure.