Chương 31: 30-The Accidental Tourists

Billy shook his girlfriend's shoulders gently, trying to wake her up. God, she slept soundly. An aftereffect of sleeping only once per month, he guessed. She groaned and gently cursed. She spoke, her eyes still closed, before Billy had a chance to say anything.

"Let me guess," she began.

"Dawn is not here anymore. She vanished in the middle of the night after saying something ominous and giving us some mysterious instructions to follow. Bob lost her for a second and—poof! She was not there anymore." Billy laughed, despite being annoyed too.

"You know her well," he answered.

"I swear that bloody woman makes Batman look like a wedding planner," Jenna muttered before finally opening her eyes and standing up.

"What is it, Bob? What did Mrs. I-Have-Been-Doing-This-For-Many-Lifetimes say before going off to create a new universe or whatever she does for a hobby in her spare time?"

"She gave us back the Icosahedron. She insisted we must carry it on us from now on." Bob held the artifact in his right hand. Jenna made a face of disgust.

"Ugh. Hoped to never see that thing again. Bob, you carry it inside your Inventory perk; it will be safer there." The artifact vanished in midair as Bob did what he was told.

"She also gave us a dimensional beacon to teleport to Milwaukee," Bob explained, handing Jenna a small metal sphere with some engravings on it.

"She said you could read the coordinates inside it."

"Yes, I can," Jenna answered, holding the sphere.

"But I don't get it. We have been traveling around the countryside toward Kenosha on top of a bloody elephant, playing Hegemony —and Helena cheats at it—because we did not want to set off any dimensional alarms the Federation might have placed."

"And now we are supposed to teleport right inside their main city?"

"There were additional instructions," Bob explained.

"We are supposed to have a thirty-second window of opportunity to do it starting at 7: 32: 51 PM."

"Did she care to explain why?" asked Jenna, puzzled.

"She placed an artifact that will go off at that exact time, disrupting all of Milwaukee's dimensional defenses for thirty seconds," Bob answered.

"And how has she managed to do that?"

"She placed it 42 years ago, apparently."

"Son of a gun. She is using time travel. Won't that make her dissonant?"

"It seems not, as long as the artifact goes off in the present." Billy realized that Dawn was much more dangerous than she looked. Someone with those resources was impossible to predict.

"Jenna, you have your answer right there," he told her.

"She knew we would never reach Kenosha." Jenna's eyes glazed as she made calculations.

"No, it is more than that. She wanted us to make contact with the Federation and the Answer. She thinks we should be aware of their tactics before heading off to Milwaukee. God, could she just not explain that? A nice PowerPoint slide, perhaps?"

"There is something else troubling me," Bob said.

"She claims we are valuable, yet she did not intervene when Jenna almost died. She said we would not have been worth the effort if we needed saving."

"The fight in Stanton could easily have ended badly. In the end, it was Sarah who saved the day. She seems to be training and testing us simultaneously. And she does it by placing us in great danger."

"What is she training us for? If she thinks we are so valuable, why endanger us?"

"I think the answer is obvious, Bob," Jenna answered.

"We are very valuable to her, but irreplaceable, we are not. She only gets one chance to destroy the Icosahedron, and she wants to do it right. That means we must be up to the task. If she thinks we are not, she will just wait another eternity until a more promising candidate comes up. That woman does not see time as we do." They spent the rest of the day getting ready for the window of opportunity. Billy checked his new respawns—five variations on the Federation-soldier theme, all of them at level 15.

He used his respawn screen to check their abilities, curious about how his module would mimic soldiers with a wide variety of magic items. They all had a storage ability that worked much like the inventory function in video games, and three different meta-abilities that created powers which manifested as items wielded by the soldier. He focused on one of the abilities of the Federation Healer.

Medicinal Potion (Alchemy Use 4): Design a rank four power that meets the following requirements: -It must manifest as a potion or elixir that can be drunk by anyone with access to Alchemy Use. -It permanently loses its power if the caster ever moves more than 20 feet away from it. -It must have a healing, restorative, or warding power, which works on the person who drinks it. -Conjuring the potion requires five minutes of concentration. A new potion may be created once per day. A slot must be available.

Alchemical Hauler x2: The Healer may store up to five potions at the same time. Paid by the Government x2: A new potion may be created once per hour. A slot must be available. Billy was always impressed by the ingenuity of the spawn module when copying abilities that lacked a clear Pantean equivalent. It came with a way to simulate a fighter with access to a stockpile of consumable healing items. This class had limited utility for him, however, as the potions would not work on Jenna or Bob.

He checked the rest of the new classes, which mostly worked along the same lines: powers manifested as items that could be altered with some time and effort.

The Guardians could conjure magical shields and armor on their bodies, the Grenadiers and Gunners specialized in wands, staves, and different types of magical grenades, and the Squad Leader had the storage power, one wand ability, a medicinal potion ability, and a leadership power based on the Harmony skill, which only worked on a group led by the soldier and manifested through orders instead of song. An interesting take, but not much more useful than some of the other spawns he already had access to.

It could work as a disguise tool if they had to infiltrate the enemy HQ, though. However, those classes had done him some good. They had given him insight into how the respawn module worked when creating copies. They were not perfect lookalikes; they were merely simulations that used Pantean Skills and Perks instead of the original abilities. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The Feds did not manifest powers as magical items—they could use real items created by other soldiers. There was no way the module could mimic that; instead, it had created an ability whose results looked very much like the original powers. He finally understood something that had been bugging him all along: he always got a full class when the model was an Essential, with Competencies and Choices that matched its level.

Billy knew that was not always the case with real Essentials, as dungeons sometimes saved Essence by creating mobs with only a few powers instead of the full suite matching their equivalent level. That never happened to him. Everything he got was Pantean in origin, but the module presented it as a fully empowered character based on the active System of the world the Essential came from.

It did not matter if the Essential was less powerful than it ought to be—his module always used the active System as the benchmark for what the class should be able to do. If the copy was not perfect, it opened other possibilities—could he hack his module to make it copy models that did not really exist? Could he design his own classes? For one brief moment, he was caught between excitement and fear. He felt like a kid who had been gifted a chemistry set for Christmas—a set with dangerous components.

He had lost count of the times he had almost lost his identity when experimenting with his powers. His last major acquisition had been Essence Gestalt. He could use the forms in his Akashic Library as letters to create new words, the gestalts. Gestalts had one important limitation: they could not be improved after being created with Learning the Ropes, which limited their usefulness. And Learning the Ropes was a great power. He could level any form past its original rank, acquiring new abilities.

However, such progress never lasted—his Akashic Library always used base imprinted forms: he could spawn as a Blind Swordsman and level it any way he chose, but once he went back to the Blue Room, all he had learned would be lost. If he tried the form again, he would respawn at the Swordsman's original level. Furthermore, very powerful forms could influence his mind if he ever leveled them past the rank at which they appeared in his Akashic Library.

That was the reason he had never dared level Belegrin past her natural level of 70. He could get lost inside her mind and forget he was Billy. Once he had a clearer idea of how his module worked, he immediately envisioned new ways to take advantage of it—he was a Loser, after all. Could he also create his own letters and add them to his Essence Alphabet? Could he cheat the system into letting him level his gestalts? Or memorize different advanced versions of the same akashic form?

He felt he was onto something there…

"My name is Sophie Eccleston. I was part of a team of assassins sent by the Federation to take down everyone here, plus all the Babylonian Essential bosses," Sophie explained in a flat monotone—she was a broken woman. At least she is alive, Dawn thought. She was a nice kid. She would have liked to save McKenna and Alan, too, but it was not to be. They were too conditioned.

"We were meant to create havoc in Babylon and destroy its dungeon, releasing its essence all over the countryside and destroying its military capacity in one fell swoop."

"But that was not all, was it?" Dawn walked calmly behind Sophie as she stood in front of Dignity, Morton, the ex-hunters, and the Amazon Royals. Curiously, the Amazons were the only ones that seemed to take this in stride. They had centuries of fictional life inside one of those oh-so-dramatic warrior cultures—they had probably already seen their share of coups, assassinations, and betrayals.

"Those were the instructions we received," Sophie answered carefully.

"McKenna thought it was part of a trap to lure the Losers to Milwaukee. A staggering blow to Babylon would force them to react. The most effective counterattack would be assassinating Bilto before we could use him to create our own alchemical dungeon."

"I see," Dignity answered coldly. She exchanged glances with the Royals.

"Our path is clear. You said the Losers are walking into a death trap. We must ease things for them. Tonight, we start our march toward Milwaukee. Each soldier Hawkings has to employ to stop us is one less soldier to watch their headquarters."

"I thank you, Dawn. I had doubts, but you have proven yourself to be a friend of Babylon."

"My help has a price, Dignity. Sophie's life must be spared. She has lost all her powers. She is no threat to you now." Dignity nodded.

"I have no trouble with that, but she can't remain on Earth for now. Our Beli friends there"—she gestured at Pob and Beliza, who were standing at the end of the hall—"can take her to Belona with them." Pob was Discovery's representative and a frequent visitor to Babylon, now that Babylon and Belona were joined through New Velta. Beliza never left his side. She had become a good friend of Elena, Rosita's daughter, and often visited her.

"If she does not have a system anymore, she can even acquire Bounty there. I do not mind letting her live, as long as that life is not on Earth," Dignity finished. Beliza took Sophie's hand and led her away from the hall.

"Do you like playing cards?" she asked Sophie.

"Earth to Billy, copy!" Jenna cheerfully said as she sat down beside him.

"It is almost time, are you ready?" They had already gathered all their belongings and stored them inside Bob's mind. That man was a treasure. Billy sighed. He had enjoyed the trip through the forest. Sarah was too calm about losing at Hegemony, taking all the fun out of the game, but even so, it had been a nice trip. He wondered what kind of life he was living now, fighting for his life practically all the time.

He missed the old, lazy days, when all he had to worry about was stepping on one of the landmines in the garden or his aunt finally going full crazy and trying her machete techniques on him. He sighed. Ah, the simple life… They grouped as Jenna counted backward: "6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… Go!" Billy saw her face grow focused as Bob opened a Celestial Gate. They all jumped through the rift. The rift suddenly closed, leaving them in the dark.

Jenna held up one of Bob's minor enchantments: a runed medallion, usable by anyone, that glowed as brightly as an electric flashlight when exposed to darkness. They were inside a small, dusty room that smelled as if it had not been aired for ages. There were glass jars on a shelf to the right, an old table with three chairs covered in dust, and a piece of paper yellowed by time. Left you some honey and hardtacks. They are the only edibles that will last for forty-two years.

You are four hundred feet south of the Federation Headquarters. Bilto is inside. You will have to free him, let him escape, and then kill the only boss holding the dungeon together when he is no longer in range. Billy must create a new dungeon with the following features: The name must be the Inside-Out Palace The Motif must be As Inside, So Outside It must have a single, newly created tag called Manifestation. I recommend spending at least 12, 000 AP on it.

The HQ will be crawling with Federation troops and hunter-killer squads tasked with detecting you and countering your powers. This must be done within three days, or everything will fail. Love, Dawn P. S.: I will not help you.

"As inside, so outside," muttered Bob.

"That is based on one of the oldest known laws of magic, as above, so below." Billy could not care less.

"I have only around 4, 000 AP. Where am I supposed to get the remaining 8, 000 AP? I can't corpse-camp! We are in hostile territory."

"What is your take on this, Jenna?" Bob asked, turning toward her. She was busily eating some honey-smeared hardtack.

"You know," she mumbled, her mouth filled with food, "this is really good." The room belonged to an abandoned apartment that had not been used in years. Mildew, dust, and graffiti covered the walls. The building had gone through the boom-and-bust office-apartment—cheap lodging—crackhouse—abandoned ruin life cycle, so common in most post-boom cities. They climbed to the fourth floor and studied the city from above. The streets were frantic with military personnel, going in all directions at once.

"What do you think, Jenna? Is it because of the breach in their dimensional defenses?" asked Bob.

"Only partly, Bob," said Jenna.

"I have no doubt they know they have been infiltrated, and some of them are looking for us. But most of these troops are over-equipped. They are not hunting. They are preparing to march."

"They are going to face Babylon in battle. That is our real window of opportunity."

"Do you think they are marching there?" Jenna thought for a moment before answering.

"No. Too disorganized. Too chaotic. This was not planned. They are reacting. It is Babylon that's marching here. They just want to stop them before they reach the city." The three losers looked at the Federation's Headquarters, a massive building looming on the horizon. A never-ending stream of troops emerged from it in orderly files. That was the trouble with dungeons: their interiors could be much larger than their exteriors. Nice when you were cityscaping, not so much when you needed to infiltrate them.

Something significant had happened.