Soulforged Dungeoneer

Nothing that happened in about the two and a half days that followed came easily, and I mean nothing.

The Dancing Plague didn't end just because the battle ended, and there ended up being a kind of quarantine where we did our best to figure out how to stop it, but neither dancing along with it, nor doing a full actual musical number from start to finish, nor anything else sensible made the problem go away. Merry went inside my head and examined it from there, but could only say that the clockwork mechanism behind the Spontaneous Musical Number was fucking huge. Since she couldn't help, I told her to stick with Louise, who had been able to stay far enough away to avoid getting infected.

Anyway, the quarantine obviously interfered with rescue operations, because a bunch of civilian houses and buildings had been caught up in the fight, and believe me, it was fucking bad public relations to be dancing in the background when news reporters were talking about a midnight murder-brawl, innocents killed in their homes, a possible invasion of foreign interests, and broadly speaking, one of the worst public fights between Dungeoneers to be reported in the United States. Not the absolute worst--there was one dust-up in New York that had been a real eye-opener--but certainly in the top 20, if only in terms of how many people died, Dungeoneers included.

It took direct intervention from High Priestess Cream to turn off the dance-off and restore a shred of dignity to the proceedings, and I can tell you in no uncertain terms that she hated every single last one of us, because she let each and every one of us know personally. She saved me for last, because she knew with absolute certainty that this was my fault.

This is not one of those situations where I could say, "If her tongue was any sharper, she would have done damage," because she did do physical damage to me as she chewed me out, and I sat there and took it. For all that I'd been disoriented and confused ever since the fight started, for all that there had been a heady feeling of invincibility in the middle of the dance fight, it was my neighbors who died. I didn't know all of them, or even most of them, but I knew their faces, and some of their families.

Mostly, that made me want to fight more rather than less, but the whole point of me getting chewed out was that the deaths were preventable--they were me kicking a dragon and then going home to my apartment like nothing was wrong. I could certainly blame the people who actually did the killing--they deserved that much--but only in the same way that you blame a storm for blowing through, or a fire for burning down your house. I should have known.

Eventually, I was able to get a word in edgewise, and we went behind closed doors to discuss the hidden helicopters, the enslaved assassins, and the role that I, Zoya, and Vlad played in everything. I freely and without worry for the consequences handed over the slave items I had to the High Priestess, who by this time had moved emotionally from "slow motion steam explosion" to "pot on a stove threatening to boil over at any moment". She regarded the items as though each and every one of them was a war criminal, but promised that she would investigate each of them before making a decision about how to respond.

And then she had me arrested for breaking parole. Which... from one perspective, entirely fair. Can't say that I approved, but a whole lot of things had become very chaotic very quickly, and she was suddenly the one who had to deal with a whole lot of things at once, so I stopped being the highest priority really quickly, while also having proved myself to be something of a loose cannon.

That having been said, the task of putting me in jail was made significantly more complicated by the fact that this time they decided against knowingly putting me in a situation I could escape. To avoid that, they transferred me to a Dungeoneer detainment facility--or they tried, but someone tried to kill me, and I'm not sure whether they were an assassin, a mob hitman, or someone trying to get revenge for the fact that the fight had started at all, but they knocked over a bus filled with like, five people all significantly higher level than me, using some kind of bomb.

I would describe the scene, but much most of like my prison sentence, my contribution to the story was that I could probably have escaped and didn't, and we've been through that before. Mostly I just sat quietly while the jailors resolved that situation, because me doing anything, even to help, was only going to make things worse.

Eventually they tried, when they got to the detention facility, to ascertain what it would actually take to detain me against my will, with a Priestess there to measure whether or not I was lying. I, of course, was not particularly eager to help them render me powerless, and so we had a very tense back and forth where they suggested something, I cast doubt but didn't specifically say whether or not I thought I could escape, the Priestess judged that I thought I could, and they upped the stakes.

Eventually, I was placed in a level-dampening collar and given an actual large steel ball chained to my foot, then left in a fairly small stone room with not a lot of amenities. And this, to be clear, is basically what I was afraid of when I resisted being arrested in Armand Bayou the first time--because while yes, bad things had happened around me, I was now locked in a very small room, feeling like I was choking all the time, because I had violated parole. As a repentant murderer, I'd been trusted, and I'd proven that trust wasn't misplaced--well, except for that one other murder, which was justified as self-defense. But now that I was officially untrustworthy, there were a whole lot of people very eager to do violence to me in an official capacity.

I discovered within about six hours that I could still use enough power with the collar on to be able to remove it, which only got me in more trouble, since they were also keeping an eye on me. The collar had, essentially, just lowered my level, but even putting me below level 10, which deactivated my Class and large sections of my Dungeoneer system, didn't actually separate me from a skill I had made myself--a skill that could do both telekinesis and even teleport me around a little bit, if I had the mana to spare. That was an interesting little tidbit that nobody else seemed to be aware of.

Ultimately, the facility was still trying to figure out what to do with me when orders came from above that I'd be released again. I didn't find that out for another eight hours, because they resisted the orders, but Cream was as unsympathetic towards them as she was towards me, and a bunch of active duty National Guard troops showed up to inform them gently that they were not actually given permission to say 'no'.

The orders to release me were not quite the same as saying I was set free, though.

Ultimately, I was obliged to actually meet with High Priestess Cream at Armand Bayou so that she could clear the quest she was given by her god, which (in contrast to the one I was given) actually had consequences for her. While we were there, I asked if there were any updates about the Heretic Knight, Bo, and she begrudgingly had me filled in--although the answer, broadly, was "No, he's still there and kills anyone who tries to get past him." And then we briefly discussed how the entire reason why I was trying to get stronger rather than taking another easy path available to me was to try to fix this whole fucking situation.

She seemed to think that was also a reason why she should hate me, though I don't understand her logic in the slightest.

Ultimately, since I had proven I could kill, maim, or at least disarm people significantly above my level, she agreed to help me with the one piece of the self-imposed puzzle that I had left--figuring out how Bo had been trained in the martial arts, to give me a way to prepare for him. Since all I had was a name, though, the people assigned to help got mad and accused me of wasting their time, even though I tried repeatedly to get them in contact with Harry, who had identified the guy in the first place.

Which led, finally, two and a half days after the midnight jamboree, to me finally being able to sit down with Harry.

"You look like you've been through some shit," Harry told me, his posture and face both showing exhaustion on his part as well.

"Yeah, well," I said, "you know how it is. Went twenty five levels into a dungeon I'm not high level enough to enter, took a solo dip through a fairy dungeon, fought a challenge boss four times my level, took the fairy dungeon again, argued with a god, got ambushed by assassins, stole from the mob, got attacked in the middle of the night, and was sent to jail for breaking parole. How's your week been?"

Harry just looked at me for a long time, and said, "Not as bad as yours."

And we laughed, a little, and moved on.

The information Harry had about Bo wasn't exactly thin, but it pointed in an inconvenient direction. Bo, like the assassins, had been in the country illegally; I guess Galveston Port was some kind of common entry point, though I don't know why here instead of, say, New Orleans just a couple hours to the East, which was connected to the whole Mississippi River, and would presumably be a good place to smuggle people throughout the country. Wherever Harry had gotten his information (and at this point I quietly assumed it was someone involved with the import of assassins) they knew about where he had come from, and it was an isolated place up in the mountains of China. Not the Himalayas, as grand and picturesque as that place was, but along the border of China and Vietnam.

Apparently, he'd been for hire, and he had, effectively, put that shit on his resume, a copy of which Harry had gotten a hold of. That resume wasn't terribly specific, saying that he'd trained in Vovinam and "Kung Fu" (which might have meant anything, really) before being enlightened by the Dungeon and practicing what was known in the West as Cultivation.

The Dungeoneers who were sitting with us seemed very nervous to be handling a document that was apparently semi-formal paperwork for a mercenary who'd been smuggled into the USA, but they also didn't ask questions about that, which was the first bit of luck I'd had since getting out of the Dungeon.

Anyway, the dossier pointed us in two general directions--his combination of martial arts was one, but he also listed a master in Hanoi, Vietnam, who had helped with the Cultivation side of things. Both were interesting leads, aside from the fact that I didn't speak a word of either Vietnamese or Chinese, and didn't have the time necessary to learn.

"There are Dungeoneer items for learning languages," offered Harry as I sat there, feeling grouchy. "Skill books and boosters."

I considered it, but shook my head. "Even if I could speak the language," I said, trying as I spoke to put a finger on exactly what was bothering me, "we're talking about trying to track down people already associated with the mob I just fought." Harry hadn't said that, exactly, but he didn't correct me. "Meanwhile, I'd be in the middle of a culture I don't understand, with a language I barely know, trying to find the people who trained someone I want to kill and hoping that they'll tell me what I want to know and not decide that I represent a threat to their business or pride." I chewed my lip for a second, and shrugged. "Also, it's not like American relations with Vietnam are fantastic anyway."

"There is that," said one of the USDA handlers I didn't bother to learn the name of. Maybe... it was Phil? I don't care. He was kind of a jerk.

"Anyway, at this point, this is where things stand." I leaned forward and tapped my finger on the table. "I can find people who know Vietnamese and Chinese martial arts and practice against them, but before that, I need to do a bunch of practicing with my new abilities and equipment--well, probably get new equipment, since my best sword is still from the end of Pearland." I picked up the printout that had the guy's stats, which was the one thing that was a success from the military operation that Henry and Susie had barely survived, and compared it to my own.

And my stats had shifted a lot, mostly after dumping that bottle of experience inside of my brain for Merry's sake. It wasn't proper Cultivation, I'm sure--my biggest gains were in Strength, Intelligence, Agility, and Dexterity, all places where I'd felt my stats lagged behind what I demonstrated in combat. My toughness had gained almost nothing, presumably because I treated myself like glass in most cases. I'm sure proper technique would have raised things evenly, or brought up my lowest stats first, or whatever, but the raw and basically-accidental version improved my strengths rather than my weaknesses, which (if I'm being honest) is more or less what I would have done anyway, but with some hedging for safety.

The point is, I was still well below Bo's numbers--like, embarrassingly below, in some places--but the gap had shrunk a lot. Bo had a strength of 231 at the time, and it may have only raised; mine was now just over 110. His agility had been 183, and mine was 97. The only standout difference was intelligence, where his numbers were lower--his 107 to my 125. That was separate from Willpower, though, where he again topped me.

"Ultimately," I said, half distracted by the numbers, "I have to be good and comfortable with my arsenal in general before I practice specifically against martial artists. Most likely, that's going to mean spending a whole bunch of time in a Dungeon, and hopefully one above my level, until I feel as comfortable with the danger as I can be."

"Uh huh," said Phil-or-whatever, leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms. "Explain again why we shouldn't just have someone else kill the bastard, and to hell with you? People are dying."

"The people who are dying know what they're getting themselves into," I said, crossly. "Which is a hell of a lot better than it was before we--before I--reported on exactly what was happening and where. And it's not like you couldn't seal off Armand Bayou--"

The asshole stood up and slammed his hands into the table that separated me and Harry. "Dungeons are a goddamn tactical resources," he snarled at me. "You don't have the right to make these kind of decisions."

I blinked at him, feeling a warm haze of hatred floating around in my chest, but I squashed it. The hypocrisy of trying to say that I was making the decision myself, instead of by his bosses, was infuriating--all because he wanted the decision made his way, of course he should be the one everyone listens to. As though arguing between us was going to decide anything? I just shook my head.

My backing down seemed to make him think that he was succeeding at his... intimidation? I guess? So he stood up and moved closer to my face, intensifying the degree to which he yelled as he tried to make his very poorly thought through arguments again. "This would all be solved with one person," he said, "with appropriate levels of strength, coming in through those hidden dungeon whatevers and taking care of him. Just put out a bounty on--"

I'd been looking over at the other two handlers, but they seemed uninterested in stopping the guy from yelling, and also looked somewhat interested in stopping me if I did anything, so all I did was take two fingers and shove them up Phil-or-whatever's nose, then stood up and lifted the offending party by the inside of his nose. That probably wouldn't work too well on a human, but a Dungeoneer's nose was definitely strong enough to not rip off, or so I discovered. The leverage was terrible, though, forcing me to use more strength than was particularly comfortable.

"Let me make this clear to you, asshole," I said. "I'm not the one in charge, and even if I were, shouting me down would not make what you're saying any smarter than it is. No matter how much you fucking shout, you aren't getting what you want, and if you want people to fucking listen to you, maybe say something people haven't fucking thought of before. Because I'm pretty sure everyone already knows what you're saying--I certainly do. And sure, part of the reason why I'm not going to willingly be a part of that plan is because it would be really bad for me, but also, it's not quite as simple as you want to make it sound."

"That happens," I pointed out, as the other two handlers closed menacingly on me, "when you say that shit is simple that you know basically nothing the fuck about. Because that 'hidden dungeon whatever' you're talking about?" I pulled the assholes face closer to mine. "Attempting that shit is what created this situation in the first place."

Well, as far as I knew, that was a lie. I don't really know how Bo got involved with a Fairy Queen, but I'm sure that he could not have gotten involved with them if he didn't use the Fairy Dungeons. Maybe it was hubris, or some other thing I don't know anything about. But, as far berating this asshole for thinking he knew what was going on, it seemed effective.

I flicked my fingers to dislodge the asshole, and Harry and I both gave cool, uninviting stares to the handlers who were clearly trying to intimidate me.

"And one more thing," I said as I sat back down. "If I fail, due to the quest, Bo is still removed. If they send someone out who's highly powerful and they die, we still have the same problem. Maybe a worse problem, if the heretic knight gets stronger by defeating his enemies. That's one of many variables in this equation that you have no idea about, and shouting doesn't make you better informed." I sighed and turned to Harry, who looked amused at the whole thing. "When do you think you're getting out? I could really use the money you owe me."

"Oh, that." Harry paused, and shook his head. "I was hoping to do that quietly, but I suppose it can't happen soon if we do. I'll put in a word with my lawyer. Most of what I had was confiscated, but the money transfer should go through. It will be reported, but..."

"Even if half of it went to taxes," I said, "I'd be in a much better place."

Harry just nodded. "I'll get it done. In the meantime, you should just get the dungeon experience you need. One way or another, that seems best."

I sighed, realizing as I did that the quest to get proper equipment and experience would probably be long and repetitive. "Yeah," I said. "Too bad I can't show you my new skill. I think you'd find it interesting."

Harry shook his head. "From what I've heard, it must be quite the thing. My own Death Wizard class bends several Dungeon rules, but I wouldn't consider going further. Even knowing that it's possible... the path forward for me already makes sense. I see no reason to put myself at risk in order to make things move faster."

I nodded, but shrugged after a minute. "Maybe I'm sensitive as a psionic type," I said, "or maybe it's because I was already psychic, but even telekinesis never quite felt right. Remaking the skills so that they work the way you expect... that's apparently the definition of X-rank, but inventing new bullshit skills like I did is..." I laughed and shook my head. "Well, I wouldn't advise it, and certainly not for someone without a fairy companion."

In my head, Merry nodded, not particularly because I was stroking her ego, but more because we both knew just how much she'd been involved in the process. Honestly, she added in the moment of quiet that followed, if you're as weird as everyone says you are, I don't think anyone else is really ready to experiment with this. Maybe a few here and there, but it's not the same as teaching people to reach a higher rank with a skill. It involves Dungeon internals, and--

Harry interrupted her without knowing that he did. "I was never going to try," he repeated. "Though I wonder just what adapting controls for wizard spells would even be like. The skills themselves seem inviolable, but perhaps there's some aspect to controlling them that I don't even know of, yet."

"I can't help with that," I said, smiling a little. I hadn't been able to freely talk with anyone like this in a while--

"God, these fucking assholes," muttered Phil-or-whatever, not very quietly, spoiling the mood.

So I just sighed and got up. resigning myself to a bunch of boring Dungeoneer work without any good company.