Chương 149: CDM 3, Chapter 25: Icebreakers

The Army chose the Pampas Plains for Fort Poolaw because miles and miles of flat land were ideal for grinding levels. Unlike the region we visited with the Bluewater boosters, the plains had no major terrain challenges and little to no ruins, so getting from gate to gate was relatively straightforward. Like Hornby and Giago said the day before, the plains weren't entirely hassle-free, but I liked the idea of being driven from gate to gate instead of having to hike the whole way.

Megan rode with Sergeant Major Cook, a defender, and a member of the support team. I got to ride with the Hornby, Giago, and a white magic spellsword from Cook's party. The Humvee behind us carried the rest of the support team. The support team was all serious soldiers. If a vehicle broke down, they were on hand to fix it. They managed tents, rations, and camp security. When we were running gates, they would follow us in to harvest mana crystals.

While we were inside, the other members of the support team were responsible for keeping watch outside. Wild monsters were a potential threat, so even if the chances of a wild anything coming along were low, the support team was there to take care of it.

"Do you ever run into locals out here?" I asked the spellsword as he drove.

"You mean like natives?"

"Yeah, people who never left and found a way to survive."

"Not on the plains, but I saw a group in the mountains when we ran a mission a while back. Heard lots of people talk about tribes in the Amazon, but I've not seen that part of the continent."

"Are they leveled?" The spellsword nodded.

"You bet. They're tough sons of bitches. Can't imagine many people surviving the wilds, let alone popping out kids while they do it."

"Are they friendly?" I asked.

"I heard about locals in China hunting crawlers who came to run gates." He shrugged.

"I've never heard of anything like that."

"Spending too much time on the internet, Carmino," Giago chirped from the backseat.

"Natives hunting crawlers? Can't believe everything you read."

"You all are based out of Pittsburgh, right?" the spellsword asked.

"Carmino lives there," Hornby answered.

"The two of us are relocating after this."

"So you were around for the S gate then?"

"Yes," I answered.

"That sounded like a total fucking mess. How bad was the survey team debacle? The reports said they were crushed to death, but I didn't see any actual coverage."

"I didn't see inside the gate either," I said.

"All I saw were people coming out in garbage bags."

"Terrible. If you're CDM, I'm guessing you were at the memorial ceremony then too? Witnessing that crawler go down in person must have been total fucking chaos." I shook my head.

"I was on leave. I watched it on television like most everyone else." Hornby leaned forward.

"One of the first suspects was CDM, right? Did you know him?"

"Yes."

"Think there's any chance he actually did it? Sometimes killers are early suspects but slip through."

"No chance."

"I heard a lot of weird shit about the Pittsburgh office when I applied," Giago said.

"One of your guys carried a party of level 5s through an ogre gate. A bunch of people have told me it's true, but I have a hard time buying it.""'Carried' is an exaggeration, but that story is true."

"Even I heard that one," the spellsword added.

"What was his name?"

"Enforcer Gray," Giago answered.

"Or do I have that wrong?"

"Nope," I confirmed.

"That's his name." I really wanted the subject to change, so I took a shot at forcing the issue.

"How likely are we to get all the C gates we need?"

"We aim for 10 per mission, but usually we end up hitting 6 or 7 Cs and then a B gate or two," the spellsword answered.

"Logistics are what really fuck you up out here. Just because another C gate pops up on the other side of the plains doesn't mean you get to run it. They don't like us traveling that far between dungeons."

"Run into any Stage 2 gate variants?"

"Not our team, but there have been two. Nasty fuckers. Total wipes in both cases. 6 singles and 3 chaperones."

"Singles?"

"Single-digit levels."

"Damn."

"One group ran into fire salamanders, and the others fought some crazy-ass, demon-summoning hobgoblins." Hearing that made me thankful that one of my variants was ogres. Fire salamanders? Not a chance I figure out a way to cheat in a fight with those. Four hours of bumpy driving later, we parked in front of a gate that was built from simple timber beams about the size of a single-lane tunnel. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

We all climbed out of our Humvees and geared up.

"Are those flares?" Hornby whispered when he saw my bandolier.

"Yes, and breach pens."

"What the fuck is a breach pen?"

"Gets hot enough to melt metal. They're handy for trolls." A fresh wave of puzzlement washed over Hornby's face when he saw me sling my crowbar sheath over my back. Behind him, Giago rolled his eyes. After nearly being shredded by a shadow hunter, I decided I was never entering a gate without all of my gear. If I hadn't been a self-conscious baby and had my bandolier with me when the shadow hunter attacked, a couple of flares could have saved lives.

Seeing Megan gear up the same way made me even more certain I made the right call. We hadn't talked much about the shadow hunter encounter, but she had heard me bitch about not having my hunting gear on me. She had clearly come away from that with the same conclusion. Hornby had an ironwood bow. He watched me open my case and looked like he had a hundred questions, but he didn't have time to ask me any of them.

"Osheski," Master Sergeant Cook said.

"This is your op."

"Alright, everyone," Megan began, addressing me, Hornby, and Giago.

"Giago, you're up front with me. Hornby, you're our floater since you have two proficiencies. Depending on what we run into, you'll front-line with us or use your bow from the back row with Gray." Hornby and Giago jerked slightly with surprise and glanced back at me when Megan referred to me as 'Gray.'

"I want us sticking to formation and listening for calls," Megan continued.

"We are treating every gate like it could be a variant, so just because the dungeon seems familiar, don't get complacent. Let's move out." As we followed Megan toward the gate, Hornby whispered, "Brother, you're forgetting your quiver."

"I'm good."

"What? Naw. First, I see you pulling out voidwood, but now you're telling me you have a Summon Arrow enchantment on it?" I nodded.

"What the fuck, man? How?"

"Comms discipline," Megan said. Then she turned and led us into the black. I recognized the dungeon type immediately. The gnarled trees, the low fog of a deep forest, and darkness deeper than night–this was a lycanthrope gate. Not only had I inspected dozens of harvest operations in gates like this, but this was the same dungeon type as a crasher-killing scene I helped with when I was an intern.

A pastor lost an arm, managed to slip away in the chaos of a monster attack, and bled to death in a highway drainage ditch. This was my first dungeon crawl with my new bow, and this was one of the most disappointing possibilities. Trees were alive, so if a monster took cover in the forest, I couldn't use the voidwood effect to hit them. The arrow would hit the tree just like an arrow fired by a regular bow would.

"Hornby, use your sword," Megan ordered.

"Werewolves are too fast, and these woods are too dense for us to use two bows. Favor back row still. They're smart enough to attack from behind."

"Yes, ma'am," he replied.

"Swords up, always. They hit fast. If this is a typical werewolf gate, we'll fight 2, then 3, then 3 again, then 5, and another 5. If we can limit unnecessary noise, we can avoid drawing more than one group at once." Megan was knowledgeable to begin with, and we had run this gate before. Admittedly, Dawit wasn't here to carry us this time, but a dungeon was far less dangerous on the second run. At the same time, I knew she had studied hard for this as well.

I wondered how much she expected the kind of pushback Giago gave. If that was part of her motivation for putting so much effort into prep, I wouldn't have blamed her. The dungeon forest didn't have a defined path through, so getting lost was a real possibility. Technically, we only had to go straight, but the mobs attacked from angles, forcing you to twist and turn in each fight. Losing your orientation was deceptively easy if you lost track of your heading for even a moment.

For this gate type, harvest teams always complained about the crawl team getting lost during the initial run, eating up a bunch of time that the harvesters would have been able to use instead. By now, everyone knew to breadcrumb, but crawlers still messed it up. We used spray paint, by the way. The trick was to ring each tree you mark so it's identifiable from any side. Otherwise, the wrong angle could obscure the breadcrumb. It's a dark fucking forest, after all.

"Left!" Megan called, raising her shield in time to block a pouncing werewolf that was mostly human, save for the beginnings of a toothy snout and long claws on its otherwise human hands. Dungeon werewolves didn't always hunt like Freddy and enter their full wolf forms. They often attacked as if they stopped partway through a transformation, and this particular monster had only barely activated its werewolf side. Megan bent her knees and used the monster's momentum to flip it over her back.

I got 3 arrows into it before Hornby was on it with his sword. When I looked up, Megan had just finished flanking a werewolf with a wolf head and a hairy humanoid body that had gone after Giago. It was dead on the ground.

"Well done," Megan said, looking us over and finding everyone perfectly healthy. The military escort watching us several feet back might have been a comfort in some distant corners of our minds, but that fight was all us. I agreed with Megan. It was smooth. Three werewolves weren't that much more challenging. Megan held the attention of two while Hornby and Giago ganged up on the third. I managed a lucky angle and activated Dual Nocking and Piercing, sending two arrows through two werewolves.

Hornby and Giago crashed into them a moment later to deliver the deathblows. Another smooth fight. If Giago could get over his wounded pride, we could make a decent party. To Megan's credit, she had kept her cool through his squawking, handling it far better than I would have. If this party did end up working out, it would be because Megan had the patience and graciousness of a saint. The fight with the next 3 werewolves went similarly.

5 was more challenging, but we handled it just fine, and the next batch was more of the same. The boss of this dungeon was an exceptionally large albino werewolf believed to represent "the old blood," the original werewolves. It waited for us on the other side of a small cave, the dungeon's way of using natural terrain to frame a boss room. The meadow on the other side was surrounded by cliff faces.

Crawlers and harvesters had climbed them on several occasions, and each time, they found only a dungeon wall at the top. The old blood werewolf sat in the grass, waiting for us to come through the cave and start the encounter. No, I couldn't cheese the boss fight with voidwood because that was my first thought too. The boss was over 160 feet away, and I was best within 90. I could potentially lob an arrow that far, but nothing productive would come of it. If the arrow penetrated at all, the damage would be minor.

Megan ordered Hornby to switch to his bow and Giago to spread out. The werewolf was large and fast. If they fought too closely together, they could be in each other's way when a swift dodge was desperately needed. From there, I turned on my garden hose of magically summoned arrows and targeted the boss's legs. Predictably, it turned its attention to me, bounding forward to counterattack. When Hornby hit it with an arrow buffed by Power Shot, the boss hesitated, slowing its charge.

That was all the time Megan and Giago needed to close the distance and slice its legs from behind. The rest of the fight after that was about patience. The werewolf's mobility was all but gone, so Megan and Giago kept their distance while Hornby and I loosed more arrows. As soon as the boss lost its focus, in came the swords. After a few minutes, Megan smiled at the boss's corpse at her feet.

"That was fun," she said.

"Ready for another?"