Chương 26: 25-The Min-Maxers

One Month Ago Colonel Hawking walked briskly through the halls of the Federation Headquarters. Today was an important day. If everything came according to schedule, the Coven would contact him tonight and accept his demands for exclusive mentoring of his roster of Champions. He could not afford to be optimistic. Optimism was a luxury asset, reserved for those not in charge. He felt the too-familiar disgust that their headquarters inspired him.

The dungeon that would eventually become this building had sprouted inside the Baird Center during a famous anime-based comic-con, which had attracted thousands of cosplayers. The dungeon had greedily absorbed the emotion-laden ambient Essence, incorporating its characteristics. He personally hated its gaudy, bright colors and that retro sci-fi look, like that of a bad space opera from the seventies, but he had to admit the dungeon was useful.

One week after the Chicago fiasco, he and what remained of his men had to battle dumb monster pets that sprang out of balls and ate men with one bite, and cute magical girls that shouted aloud the name of their magical attacks as they made whole squads explode into clouds of gore. The Federation had been born that day, battling against this very same dungeon. What does a military use as a weapon when gunpowder no longer works? You take the weapons from the enemy, of course.

They had acquired levels, but they had done so in an organized and coordinated manner, considering the needs of the group rather than the individual tastes of its components. I don't want you to become heroes, he had told his men, not so long ago. You already are. You became heroes when you risked your lives to help civilians escape from Chicago. What I want is for you to remain soldiers. Hawking's plan had worked.

They were the first to defeat a seventh rank dungeon, successfully slaying the core and all its bosses save one. That one, they had bound with magic. No powers. No retinue of mobs. Just a cog holding the dungeon together. And the dungeon remained, a giant Essence-eating machine that protected Milwaukee from the apparition of new ones. A machine inside which you could train, getting better quests that granted more experience.

A machine that could be used to create the most powerful army ever seen in the history of their planet. His first visit was to the Logistics plant. This is where 80% of his troops worked. This could be your best or worst assignment, depending on your worldview. The freshly recruited hated it, making weapons and artifacts that they would never get to use. The rest considered it a dream posting. This was the best job you could get in a real army if you had a family to return to. Sergeant Alton was waiting for him.

They had been working together for a long time, and Hawking knew him as an efficient, dependable man.

"Things are going well, Colonel," he said before Hawking had a chance to talk.

"It works just like a car factory: specialization and coordination." They passed through numerous assembly lines, where several soldiers worked, assembling magical wands, amulets, and armor. Their fingers moved so fast they blurred. Hawking knew each of those assemblers had magical abilities that let them outperform industrial factory robots.

"I see you bumped production by 20%, Sergeant. Care to explain how you did it?"

"We incorporated gathering into the process, sir."

"I thought you needed alchemical products for that?"

"Not really, sir, with the right abilities, you can refine natural ingredients, imbuing them with your magic. If the crafter who works those ingredients has an ability that synergizes with the gathering competency used, he can take advantage of the gatherer's work. It is really the same system crafters and users utilize: two different magical competencies belonging to two different individuals, working together."

"Of course, if we could add real alchemical components to it, the efficiency of the process would skyrocket," the Sergeant added. Hawking took a moment to watch the nearest assembly line, a group of four inscribing amulets. He knew they had designed their abilities and chosen their class perk so that their powers would work much better when working in tandem with others. The leader blessed the amulet he was working on, giving it the final touch, then placed it on a trolley to be taken to the depot.

Someday, that amulet would save a soldier's life. The Sergeant's work was truly exceptional. Hawking could only congratulate him. He continued his tour of the headquarters. The lower floor had been turned into a training room for Federation Squads. Squads had ten members, three of them specialized in ranged combat, two in area-attacks, two on defense, two as supports and healers, and the leader of the group, who boosted morale and used magic to transform well-rehearsed maneuvers into perfectly executed ones.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. The speed and precision with which the squad adapted to different situations and threats led Hawking to liken it to a living organism, with soldiers as its cells. He spent the better part of an hour seeing his men turn combat into a perfectly choreographed dance. He sighed. The fun part was over. Now came the tough one.

He hated talking with these people with a passion, but it was something that had to be done. He headed for the lower floors, soon reaching an out-of-the-way door with the inscription "Class Design Bureau." Someone had written with crayon under it: the fuckin' min-maxers, yeah. Each time Hawking opened this door to confront the sorry excuses for human beings working inside, he had an acute epiphany of how much he really, really loved his country. He opened the door quietly and had a look around the room.

He closed his eyes, trying to give his brain time to absorb what he had seen. There were four occupants in the room. On the far side, a quiet, unassuming guy of indeterminate age with a hoodie and sunglasses looked bored, both his feet on his desk. At his right, a much younger kid, probably no older than fourteen, concentrated on the paper in front of him, trying to ignore the rest of the room. He looked more scared than focused.

In the middle of the room, two older guys, on the younger side of twenty, one with a hipster beard, the other with a manbun, were trying to write some designs on paper. They were standing on the desk, in a precarious position, naked from the waist down, and were holding their pencils between their buttocks. The pencil from the one with a man bun slipped from his grasp, hitting the floor.

"Yo, Jason, you lose. You have to do a raspberry on my armpit, as per the rules. This is your second time. Next one, you have to look for Colon. L. Hawking and raspberry his sack," the bearded one said, laughing at his own joke.

"I am rooting for him, then," Colonel Hawking said dryly, much to the horror of all the present. Manbun and beard only needed six seconds to quickly don their trousers and sit at their desk. Manbun then turned towards the Colonel, a fake and oily smile on his face:"How may we be of service, Colonel?"

"The new designs," Hawking curtly answered.

"I am here for them."

"But of course, Colonel," the bearded guy, who Hawking thought was called Montoya, stood up and handed him a stack of folios, "let me walk you through them."

"You asked us to refine and upgrade the original classes the Coven had used against the Losers, and I want to stress that you really have to live up to the name to call yourself like that…"

"I don't care what you think," Hawking coldly interrupted him.

"The classes."

"Yes, uhm, as I was saying, we took the original Hunters, that is the Fortunist, the Inexorable, and the Merciful Master, and looked at their foundation, their base concept, so to speak. What makes these classes special?" Montoya asked dramatically.

"It is the fact that they are not designed for specific roles or situations, but against specific individuals. We extended that philosophy not only to the Losers, again, what a name, but also to other leaders in the Circle hierarchy," Montoya had been pinning the designs to a corkboard as he explained himself.

"We have designed classes as counters for Dignity, Morton, that Beli bald guy with the cards, Pob, oh my god, what's up with these guys and their names, and in the most ironic twist, which I truly appreciate because, as you can see, I am a hipster, two of the original Hunters themselves, Wu Na and Podachek, who have defected to the enemy."

"I see," Hawking said. God, this guy loved the sound of his own voice. The Colonel took the designs from the corkboard and put them in a folder, glancing at them briefly. Then he went to the desk where the younger kid was.

"Your designs, son," he told him softly. He knew Montoya and manbun bullied him endlessly. You can't put a kid with social anxiety in the same room with two trolls and expect the blood not to hit the water. The kid gave him his designs, looking almost terrified. Hawking studied them and smiled warmly at him.

"Good work, Peter. These are good," he told him. The kid looked so relieved it was almost comical. The guys at Psych Ops had decided that having poor Peter in the room would serve as bait for Montoya and manbun, whatever his name was, to keep their attention off GM. Hawking felt like a rotten bastard for doing this to him. Once this was over, he would ensure the kid received adequate compensation for all they were making him go through. Hawking then mentally readied himself. He approached GM's table.

The young man had not moved an inch since the Colonel entered the room.

"Your designs," he coldly told him.

"I have not done them," GM answered him with as much coldness as Hawking had used.

"Why?" Hawking felt a lump in his throat. Not now, please. A final confrontation with GM was inevitable, but now was the worst possible time.

"Because your ideas are shit," GM answered.

"I did these instead," he said, throwing his designs contemptuously on the table. Hawking caught the designs and placed them in his folder, along with Peter's and the two trolls'. He could hear the Min-maxers muttering among themselves as he left the room with the folder under his arm. Once in his office, Hawking remained true to his routine. He dumped the trolls' designs in the litter basket. He kept Peter's out of respect for the sacrifice the kid was making, but did not even look at them.

He concentrated on the true treasure. GM's work was exceptional, as always, straight out of the mind of a genius. He had substituted most of the powers from the Fortunist, getting rid of all the Chinese magic and keeping the power to randomize results, the only one who had shown real utility against the Primordial. He had built the whole class around that power. The Entropist. He even liked the name. His upgraded Inexorable had nothing to do with the old one.

He had correctly realized that Podachek would never work against the current Skillmaster—Bob had acquired too many new perks, and could even improvise them easily using Oaths and casting tools. The Achillean, the new class, was based on totally different concepts, ones that would neutralize the Skillmaster's current abilities. The truest measure of GM's genius was given by Billy's opponent. The Interloper. Incredible though it seemed, GM had managed to find a way to kill an unkillable opponent.

He summoned Captain Taylor, his second-in-command, and ordered him to start training Champions in those three classes.

"I want them as close to level 50 as we can get them," he instructed.

"It will be done, Colonel," he told him, as he got the blueprints from him. They specified which Competencies had to be trained, which Choices had to be made, and in which order.

"The other specialists you asked for are nearly done. What do you want me to do about the Gemini Warriors?" Gemini Warrior was a class designed specifically to assassinate Amazons. Hawking had put it on hold, as Elariana and Alarel were technically heads of state; killing those always complicated things.

"Train them," Hawking said after thinking for a moment.

"We got new intel from our sources in Babylon. Jenna is now part of the royal family. War with Valda is unavoidable at this point." Hawking sighed as Taylor left the room. He had commandeered a helicopter unit before the Apocalypse came. Now he used propaganda, assassins, and kids. He prayed it was worth it.