Chương 115: CDM 2, Chapter 51: Career Realities

Nathan was at work when I returned to my apartment, and I was surprised to realize I was relieved. I didn't want to talk about the run anymore. I didn't want to talk about whether or not I was okay. All I wanted was to lie in my bed and savor a few minutes of quiet safety. I sent texts to Beth, Nathan, and Megan to tell them I was home and that I was okay. I wasn't sure what they had heard, if anything, but I wanted to ease their minds if they were worried.

Beneath the hot water of a shower, I opened my profile to read my level 11 unlocks: Ricochet Arrow Class: Archer Type: Ability Cooldown: 15 seconds Duration: Instant The next arrow you fire bounces off hard surfaces, gaining speed and stability after that initial impact to continue its flight. Improved Recovery Class: Archer Type: Trait Cooldown: None Duration: Perpetual Prerequisite: Vengeful Arrow Reduces all cooldowns by 5 seconds. A cooldown cannot be less than 0.

Improvisation Class: Archer Type: Trait Cooldown: None Duration: Perpetual Prerequisites: Swift Hands, Bloody Hands If you wield an arrow as a melee weapon, that arrow cannot break. If you do damage with that arrow, your speed increases by 5% for 3 seconds. Unlocks beyond level 10 were less predictable. Some crawlers would get one unique offering and then two options that were essentially bonus stat points, while other crawlers were given more diverse selections, like the ones I now saw before me.

The general belief was that the system rewarded challenging encounters. A crawler who never went beyond E and D gates received fewer uniques compared to a crawler who consistently entered higher-tier dungeons. That wasn't always the case, however, and no one had yet to define the math behind those mechanisms. Leveling usually worked that way, but we couldn't say why. When leveling didn't work that way, we couldn't explain that either.

In most of the dex archer build guides, my pick for level 11 was supposed to be an ability sitting in my unselected pool: Steady Hands Class: Archer Type: Trait Cooldown: None Duration: Perpetual When in motion, your control over your bow and your shot is equal to that of a stationary shot. Improved Recovery wasn't expected to appear until level 13 or 14. In terms of utility and return, reducing the cooldown of all of my abilities was by far the best choice.

My cooldown on Piercing was already down to 10 seconds, and Improved Recovery would drop that to 5. A later unlock would let me drop those last 5 seconds, so every arrow I shot could have Piercing if I wanted. Ricochet Arrow was more commonly taken by power and marksman builds. A dex archer can simply move to get into a better position, but an archer who has to stay stationary for some time or attacks from a great distance could often lose access to a target. Ricochet Arrow made that less of a problem.

The value of Improvisation was pretty heavily debated. Having the option to use arrows as melee weapons could save your ass in a close-quarters encounter, but for the average archer, a scenario like that should be exceptionally rare. I tended to agree that the use case was too narrow, but Improvisation did look really cool in action. I decided to put off taking Steady Hands again in favor of taking Improved Recovery.

Lower cooldowns for Piercing Shot, Dual Nocking, and Multi-Shot would be more useful for me overall. Technically, Vengeful Arrow was reduced too, but going from 60 seconds to 55 was barely worth mentioning. Then I increased my dexterity by 1 and my constitution by 2.

When I was finished, my profile looked like this: Dorion Carmino Class: Archer Level: 11 XP Progress: 2789/102400 Str: 10 Dex: 19 Con: 12 Int: 5 Cha: 3 Abilities: Piercing Shot Dual Nocking Multi-Shot Vengeful Arrow Traits: Ranged Accuracy Improved Reload Sharpen Momentum Swift Hands Bloody Hands Battle Hardened Improved Recovery Spells: (none) Not that I had the chance to multiclass, but knowing that option was officially behind me made me a little sad.

I could technically multiclass whenever I wanted, but with the gap between levels widening, that was a waste of money now that I was beyond level 10. I don't recall falling asleep, but I woke up to Megan knocking on my door, yelling, "Dorion! Are you in there?" Before I answered, she came inside.

"Why aren't you answering your phone?"

"I was resting." She hugged me as I sat up in bed.

"I'm so glad you're okay. Is it true you saw ogres in a D gate?" Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Remember the ogre dungeon where the raiders attacked us?" She nodded.

"It was a shorter version of that."

"Good Lord. And the boss?"

"The same." Megan shook her head in disbelief.

"How are you still alive?"

"I thought like a Dungeon Diva instead of a crawler and had two solid CDM leaders with me. We should all be dead."

"Do you need anything?"

"I'm fine."

"Nathan and Beth are worried too," she added.

"I told everyone I was fine." Megan rolled her eyes.

"We know better than to take your word on that."

"Chapman stuck up for me."

"What?"

"I was surprised too," I said.

"Apparently investigators have something called a severity protocol, and-""I know it."

"How?"

"You're not the only person who can read, Dor. Do you know what level they were on?"

"One."

"That doesn't make sense." I shrugged.

"Chapman was pissed about it and chased them out of my room."

"Having her step up for you must feel pretty good."

"Nothing about this feels good. The captain died right in front of me, and one of the settlers was in bad shape when I got discharged. Could be he's dead already."

"That's fair," Megan conceded.

"I'm sorry. Are you hungry? Thirsty?"

"No, I'm okay."

"Well, I'm going to sit with you for a while."

"You don't need to do that. I'm going to go back to sleep."

"Are you sure?"

"Completely." She stared at me skeptically for a moment before standing.

"Let me know if you need something."

"Thank you for checking on me."

"You better be serious about resting."

"I am." I couldn't go back to sleep, and I genuinely tried. Every joint and muscle in my body ached, and the doctors said that would take a week or two to subside. My constitution wasn't high enough for the rate of speed I managed to hit, so I would need time to recover from the damage I subjected myself to. When I told the doctor that I pushed my dex just as hard with a goblin champion but was fine, he suggested that exhaustion combined with intense overexertion made this encounter harder on my body.

To pass the time, I started on my research of canine-like monsters. If the trail cam on Tim's farm caught something definitive, that would be ideal, but I worried that even a photo wouldn't answer all of our questions. Trail cam images weren't always clear, and we could run into the same problem we had with the prints: We might not see enough to differentiate between monsters.

A few of the monsters were easy to eliminate, though: Blink dogs didn't have enough fur–or an ability that provided the same benefit–to survive a cold winter. The mystery monster did. Similarly, bat dogs weren't active in the winter and also hunted in packs. Our monster appeared to hunt solo. Hellhounds could survive a winter. They would hate it, though, and would leave a trail of charred trees and rocks wherever they went. The prints were too small to be worgs or dire wolves.

Given how long Tim had been dealing with dying livestock, I could be reasonably sure this wasn't a younger version of either monster species. I could be extra sure I was right about the worgs because they too were pack hunters. A lone dire wolf could do something like what we saw, and honestly, I was grateful to have a reason to eliminate that species. A dire anything, even fucking Lil' Dorion, would be beyond our ability.

Lastly, I was certain we weren't dealing with a barghest, which is kind of like a werewolf equivalent for goblins. Supposedly, barghests were a rare kind of goblin shaman that gained the power to transform. Others say that barghests are cursed goblins, not unlike our folktale idea of lycanthropy being a transmittable virus. We didn't see any goblin tracks or activity, so no barghests. Other unlikely possibilities were yeth hounds and moon callers.

Tim never reported howling, which was what those two monster species were known for. In the case of yeth hounds, their howl was actually a deadly aural attack. Moon callers howled to activate a few basic druid spells. Death dogs were about as unlikely as yeth hounds and moon callers in my mind. Death dogs could survive cold climates, but they preferred warm. They also tended to exclusively hunt humans. If a death dog was running around Tim's farm, he would have been eaten before his cows were.

That left six possibilities: Gnolls Cerberuses Haunters Werewolves Frost wolves Shadow mastiffs The prints were on the large side for a gnoll but still in the realm of possibility. Though they also preferred hunting in packs, a lone wolf gnoll wasn't uncommon. Cerberuses were ultra-aggressive, territorial, and the right size. I couldn't find any reports of wild cerberuses, though. Every recorded sighting had been in a dungeon gate. Haunters were the right size, but they were essentially wolf wraiths.

None of what I read specified if haunters left tracks, so I noted that I may need to come back to this possibility later before I could eliminate it completely. Werewolves could fit the prints, and a few escaping and reproducing pre-satellites wasn't outlandish. Frost wolves were a similar story as gnolls in that they could appear as solitary hunters, but a frost wolf would struggle to survive a Pennsylvania summer.

Granted, the sources I found were vague on what a frost wolf could or could not endure, so I didn't eliminate them as a possibility entirely. Shadow mastiffs were arguably the cleanest match for our monster. The size fit. They hunted alone for most of their lives. And they hated daylight, so they were strictly nocturnal, whereas Earth wolves had been observed hunting in daylight if the opportunity was right. Six possibilities wasn't very narrow.

Even less comforting was the fact that at least half of those candidates were beyond our abilities as hunters. Cerberuses, haunters, and shadow mastiffs were too much for us. Stumbling upon one of their dens in the middle of a forest exploration would be just as deadly to us as if we attacked them head on, so I greatly hoped we could eliminate them entirely somehow. My apartment door opened and closed. Nathan's heavy workboots thumped onto the floor. A single knuckle rapped on my door.

"Hey dude. I got pizza and beer. Interested?"

"Yes, please," I said, standing to follow him to the kitchen.

"How was the airport today?"

"Cold as shit, but coming along. Rumor is we'll be working on a new hospital in a few months, so we must be closing in on done." I claimed a beer and a piece of cheese pizza.

"Is that good or bad?"

"Neither. I'll have to drive somewhere different, but it's all the same work, you know?"

"Makes sense."

"I'm pretty burnt out on crawler content," he said.

"Mind if we do something different?"

"I could use a crawling break too."

"Great," Nathan said, claiming his chair in the living room. As he browsed movie selections, he continued.

"And uhh… I have some news."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Is it good news?"

"Yes, but I know that could be weird for you right now, given… you know."

"Are you going to tell me?" Nathan hesitated to speak for a few moments.

"I uhh… I signed for the guild house today. It's ours. Well, it's the bank's, but we get to pretend it's ours."

"For real? I didn't know that was today."

"I didn't tell you. I was worried I'd make a big deal about it and then we'd have another delay or we lost it or something."

"Congratulations, man."

"Congratulations to both of us," he corrected.

"I have to pull a bunch of permits before we can really get into fixing it up, but we're a big step closer to having our own spot. We won't have to deal with the stomp sisters ever again."

"What if Megan is a loud walker?"

"We'll be sharing the same room, so that's more of a problem for whatever schmuck ends up living under us."

"Like me." Nathan pointed at me.

"Correct."