Chương 50: Production Upgrades

I woke from my nap around noon. I reviewed my level-up options, consulted my build guides for extra certainty, and made my selections. I took Dual Nocking and dropped a stat point into strength, constitution, and intelligence. That extra point in strength would make my increase in draw weight far less noticeable, and the constitution bump would make it easier for me to maintain my speed for longer stretches.

Intelligence made me sharper and more perceptive, and I would invest in the intelligence stat a few more times as I leveled to continue improving those traits. All the build guides prioritized strength, dexterity, and constitution in the early levels before dropping points into intelligence, so I was right on track.

When I was done, I reviewed my profile: Dorion Carmino Class: Archer Level: 6 XP Progress: 258/3200 Str: 7 Dex: 12 Con: 7 Int: 5 Cha: 3 Abilities: Piercing Shot Dual Nocking Traits: Ranged Accuracy Improved Reload Sharpen Momentum Spells: (none) I checked my phone. I had a text from Beth:"Hope you're feeling better! Frank is grumpy, but I think he likes me."

"Going well then?"

"I LOVE LOVE LOVE it. There are so many tools!"

"Happy for you."

"Can Jonathan come to dinner tonight? He's giving me a ride home anyway."

"Yeah. No problem." I realized I was smiling, a big dumb happy smile accompanied by a lightness in my chest. For the myriad of doubts I had about my choice to join the CDM, all of those decisions led up to Beth getting this apprenticeship. If her interest in bowyering stuck, she could be on her way to a decent career. Whether she stayed independent or got hired on by a guild, she could make a comfortable living. The apprenticeship had only just begun, so that feeling of success might have been premature.

I knew that in the moment as well, but man, it felt good to savor a victory. The only feeling that came close to this was surviving that encounter with the trolls. I know it sounds crazy, but helping Beth felt more meaningful, and I found not dying to be pretty meaningful in the first place. The rush of that D gate adventure hit me right there on the couch. What a ride that run was. Fighting hobgoblins was the most scared I had ever been, and I survived.

My skill and my wits kept me alive through a variant no one else had ever seen before, potentially fighting a boss monster that had never been seen before either. That was like being an explorer, going somewhere no other person ever had. Knowing that I was one of the first was its own sort of thrill. My phone buzzed. Megan had texted me.

"Sooooooo your half of the ad revenue is $3, 000… So far."

"Wut""Yep. We're still getting new views. On our other vids too."

"Maybe we should invest some of it back into the channel?"

"Ooo we could get a drone. A nice one too. Have you seen the new one LootLootLouis is using?"

"The over-the-shoulder view?"

"Yeah! It's all automated and is small enough that it's useful indoors too." I looked up the drone model LootLootLouis used and checked the specs. Not only did it follow a crawler, but it also had a sense for danger, so if it was following Megan, for example, it might back up a few extra feet when fighting started. Otherwise, a stray swing from her or an enemy could be the end of the drone. In cinema mode, it dynamically sought out the best viewing angles.

Returning to the Megan example, the drone could swivel wide to get a side view of the action, capturing far more action than watching over her shoulder could.

"Let's do it. Use my half."

"Why your half?"

"I got a new bow and an apprenticeship for Beth out of this already. Makes more sense for you to use your half on yourself than on the both of us."

"Are you sure?"

"100."

"Thanks, Dor."

"We're taking this weekend off from hunting, right?"

"I'll be fine by then."

"You broke an arm."

"And now it's back together. If you're not feeling up for it, that's different. Me? I'm good."

"I could hunt."

"Great!" To celebrate the windfall of cash from the Dungeon Diva's channel, I ordered Mexican food for me, Beth, Nathan, and Jonathan. I don't remember how many tacos it was, but it was a lot. If you're paying close attention to the story, you'll have picked up on the fact that I never actually earned more money. I told Megan to spend it already, and in honor of that decision, I spent more of my personal money.

I swear I tried to be smarter about how I handled my finances, and even then, I was trying my absolute best. Nathan asked me to put his food in the refrigerator. He was spending the evening with Megan in light of her recent injuries, which I could appreciate. That left Beth, Jonathan, and me. When Jonathan came into the apartment, he set two books on the kitchen table.

"What are these?" I asked as I distributed takeout containers and plates.

"You mentioned a while back that you couldn't find any good resources on goblins," he explained.

"Those are all out of print, but you can still get copies online."

"I promise to return them in good condition." Jonathan laughed.

"They're a gift. Call it a thank you for letting me eat all your food." Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. I looked through the books as I sat. The Goblin Encyclopedia: A Field Guide, The Complete Guide to Goblin Dungeon Gates –these looked like solid finds.

"This is awesome," I said.

"Thanks, man." Beth grinned proudly. She was positively smitten by this guy, and I think I might have been too.

"He could tell you everything in them," Beth added.

"Did you read them already?" Jonathan nodded with a mouthful of food. As I thumbed through the book on goblin dungeon gates, specifically looking for mentions of hobgoblins, I asked, "Anything particularly interesting in these stand out to you?"

"I knew there were stronger goblins, but I didn't know there were so many varieties. Goblin, berserker, shaman, champion, king–those are the only ones you hear about. The field guide says wild goblins can get stronger over time, so a goblin shaman that's been alive for five years is way stronger than a standard shaman, and there are accounts of champions learning classes similar to what the system provides."

"Really?" I asked.

"I've never heard any of that."

"Crazy, right? I hadn't either. That book is from the 70s, so maybe there were more wild goblins to worry about back then?"

"Yeah, maybe." Other than a few pages on the three families of goblinoids–goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears–I didn't see any other mentions of hobs in the dungeon guide, at least not from my quick skim.

"Thank you so much for these," I repeated.

"How was Frank?" I asked Beth.

"I don't think he'll admit it, but he likes having me around. Oh my god, Dor, he has a livingwood bow for sale. He let me hold it."

"What was that like?"

"Like holding a baby for the first time, and I know that's weird to say. It's only ten years old, which is really young for livingwood, and it hasn't had a kill, so he's been shaping it as it grows." Using a livingwood bow was akin to the Japanese art of bonsai, or at least, that's how it was explained to me. Though it was a shaped piece of wood, the material was still very much alive, which also means it could die.

An unused livingwood bow needed regular watering and careful maintenance because the bow itself grew, becoming denser and even sprouting new branches. To maintain the integrity of the bow as it grows, it needs to be regularly pruned and reshaped as the expansion changes the physics of how the wood distributes the strain of a draw. All livingwood bows spent a few years under the care of a bowyer for this process, and the payoff was a bow that progressively grew in strength.

Feeding livingwood mana by killing monsters was the better way to improve the bow. Using mana instead of water didn't create new offshoots or growths that required a bowyer's hand. The material grew stronger, and its stored mana capacity increased. Not only did the bow become more powerful, but it also "learned" to work with the wielder, helping to make shots more accurate and adding an ever-increasing damage buff. Though the payoff of growing a livingwood bow could be substantial, the process was delicate.

Livingwood could experience fatigue as well as starvation, so you always had to feed it while being careful not to push it too far. If you did, then the bow died, and all that effort to grow its strength would be lost.

"If you want to stick with being a bowyer, we should save up some money to get you to level 2. Having the bow proficiency would help a lot, I imagine."

"Someday, sure," Beth said. She looked down at her phone.

"They're probably calling me in early. One second." She stood and left the room to take the call.

"Getting her that apprenticeship was very kind of you," Jonathan said.

"It's clear you really care about her."

"That makes two of us."

"Hmm?" I smiled.

"I'm glad she found you, and I know you're both really into each other."

"That doesn't trigger a big brother alarm for you?"

"She could do a lot worse." Jonathan smiled but didn't seem to know how to respond to that. I didn't make it more awkward by pressing him. Beth came back into the kitchen.

"Yeah, they want me in early." She paused to look between us suspiciously.

"Did I interrupt something?"

"Just me trying to steal your boyfriend." Nathan shook me awake on the couch.

"Bro," he said. He shook me some more.

"Bro."

"I'm awake. What time is it?"

"A little after 10 p. m. I think you should check your phone." I sat up. The hardened wounds shifting over my bones as I did felt like little fingers pressing from under my skin.

"What's going on?" I asked as I unlocked my screen. Before he could answer, I saw half a dozen troubling headlines: Crawlers Behind Church Attacks? Doom Cult Massacres Toll Ticks Up to 155 Major Crawler Orgs Split on Killings National Guard and the FBI Consider Martial Law I rubbed my eyes.

"When did this start?"

"About an hour ago. I expected them to have called you in already."

"Did they call Megan in?" Nathan shook his head.

"Guess that means you both are still on medical leave or whatever."

"Probably. Seven communities in total were targeted? Am I reading that right?" Sighing, Nathan nodded.

"Five in Pennsylvania. Two in Ohio. It's like they got deleted, man. Just wiped off the map."

"The pictures look like tornado wreckage."

"Yeah, gnarly shit. You cool if I use the shower?"

"I'm good," I answered and continued reading. The major guilds and teams in the city were all issuing statements, it looked like. Never mind that it was late on a weeknight. The Buttymen and the Pittsburgh Chapter of the Dungeon Delvers' Guild unequivocally condemned the killings and called for a major effort to identify and arrest the perpetrators. The Furious Few, the Homestead Strikers, and Dungeon Industries Inc.

"mourned" the loss of innocent lives but made sure to mention that these churches stoked the violence that bit them. By advocating for dungeon crashing, the doom cults should take at least part of the blame for this tragedy, they suggested. The Iron Crawlers, the Mill Rats, and the Allegheny Dungeon Extractors denied involvement in the attacks and provided no additional commentary or clarifications as to their stance on the events. Officially, at least.

Plenty of individual crawlers within those organizations took to their personal social media accounts to share their thoughts. Including Martin Kielar. He recorded a rant in the cab of his tricked-out pickup truck.

"Innocent deaths are never acceptable, but we can't ignore that the doomers brought this on themselves. Crawlers were attacked, so they attacked back. Again, I don't condone any of this, but I can understand how it got this bad. One of these cults? Their pastor killed a full crawl team, and nobody wants to talk about that." Which wasn't true. The pastor involved with the Iron Crawlers wipe was mentioned in every piece of coverage I saw.

"If we want real peace, doomers need to take responsibility for their attacks on crawlers. Until they do, well, I'm worried this is only the start." He talked for another twenty minutes but didn't say anything new. He either restated his original stance or veered into a rant about the hardworking Americans who make this country possible and how groups like the doom cults don't appreciate the sacrifices Americans have made over the decades. What a piece of shit.

If this was the disaster it looked like–how could it be anything else, really–maybe Megan and I wouldn't get to hunt this weekend after all. I saw a bunch of overtime in my future. Instead of an all-hands meeting like we did before, Kamil Akinwale, Chief Director for Pennsylvania CDM offices, tasked individual departments with issuing our orders. Wilson believed that was an attempt to keep official CDM statements from leaking.

The fewer people who got the actual memo, the fewer opportunities for someone to forward those directives to the press. Enforcers McDouglas and Grensmith weren't in the office. Chapman led the meeting while Enforcer Meyer stood behind her with her arms crossed.

"The Center for Dungeon Management will no longer intervene in crawler conflicts. These church attacks are horrific, but they are beyond the purview of the agency. Our charter, our core mission, is to keep dungeon gates from becoming a danger to the public. Over the years, that evolved to include managing anything related to crawlers, but that's not our mission.

"We manage dungeon gates. Period. The military, the FBI, and law enforcement are addressing the conflict. Stay out of their way.

"No CDM employee is permitted to make public statements about crawler conflicts, and the definition of 'public' is anything that could be shared with the press. Easiest solution? Don't say a word. Not on social media, not at the bar, and not around the dinner table. Your assignments will carry on as normal, but everyone is required to complete CDM mission statement training before the end of the day. You'll find the link in your inboxes."

"Didn't see that coming," Megan said as we returned to our cube.

"Makes sense, though," Black replied.

"With all the lawsuits flying around, packing it in is a good strategy."

"This doesn't surprise you?" Glen asked. He was in good spirits for someone who recently had a spear through his thigh. Wilson chuckled.

"I didn't say that. I'm only saying the logic tracks for me. I never saw this coming, either." Megan grinned.

"Good to know my weekend isn't ruined." I was the only one who really understood what she meant, and as crappy as it sounds, I was happy too. People were suffering, and I was glad it wasn't my problem. When I realized I felt that way, a dreadful guilt washed over me. Had government work already desensitized me to violence and hardened my heart? What kind of person did that make me?