Chương 150: CDM 3, Chapter 26: Previous Experience

The next C gate was a termite dungeon loaded with advanced forms. One spit acid, one spit fire, one exploded when it died, and then another variety was the same as a typical giant termite but five times as fast and five times as aggressive. After that gate closed, we drove another hour and a half before stopping in the middle of the plains. The sun was setting, so we made camp for the night, parking the three Humvees in a crude circle and pitching our tents inside of it.

The support team cooked–which meant warming up cans of beans, chicken, and corn–and kept watch. The night was peaceful but far from quiet. Crickets and katydids joined the chirping of countless frogs and toads. Occasionally, the hoot of an owl floated in from the distance. Megan ate with Sergeant Major Cook and her two party members, a defender and the white magic spellblade who had driven our Humvee. I heard Cook offering Megan feedback and advice based on the day's runs, so I didn't interrupt.

That sort of coaching was rare for crawlers since runs were hard to observe. Megan was smart enough to seize the opportunity, and I was smart enough not to disrupt it. I joined Hornby and Giago at a small fire for dinner.

"Osheski was calling you 'Gray,'" Giago observed. Frankly, I had expected this conversation to happen between our first gate and the second, but my two new squadmates had gone quiet for our rides instead.

"Yep," I said, scraping my plate for the remnants of baked bean sauce.

"You're the Gray who ran the ogre gate."

"Mmhmm."

"Why didn't you say anything earlier?" Giago asked.

"I don't like talking about myself." Hornby shook his head.

"Stories like that? It's a waste not to talk about 'em. Is that how you got your bow?"

"That was a gift from a family friend. Today was my first time crawling with it." Giago leaned in.

"You don't have to play humble with us. How'd you manage to survive ogres?"

"I saw a similar gate when I ran with boosters. Then it was just all of us trying to get out alive."

"You used boosters?"

"Me, Osheski, and Meehan. We spent a week in China with a group called Bluewater." Hornby and Giago looked at one another in disbelief. Giago itched the corner of his mustache.

"How in the hell did you end up on a Bluewater run? Those guys are serious motherfuckers. Shadow government special ops type motherfuckers."

"It's a long story, but Osheski had the idea that eventually led to the opportunity."

"You went as private citizens? It wasn't some sort of CDM training thing?"

"Private citizens," I confirmed. Hornby laughed to himself.

"Didn't think I'd be working with a dungeon hero celebrity."

"I don't know what all the stories turned into, but the gate variant is the most interesting part of them. The rest is exaggerated." The two former soldiers looked at one another and shared a brief, silent discussion. Pieces of the conversation around the other campfires leaked through the insects and frogs. Cook was talking to Megan about using a coordinated backstep to help a party solidify its formation when an encounter began.

She argued that holding perfect formation on the move was never really possible, so making that shift backward a party habit could make the start of fights a little less chaotic. That was the norm for a termite run but should be the norm everywhere, she argued.

"What was being in the service like?" I asked, hoping to turn the conversation away from me.

"Boring," Hornby joked.

"I saw some action in the Sahal region, northern border of Nigeria. Africa's version of doomers are way more hardcore than what we got in the States."

"How so?"

"Suicide bombs, IEDs, child soldiers. Anything and anyone could be hostile. Fucks with your head when you see a 10-year-old and your first thought is whether or not they're going to try and kill you."

"That sounds awful." Hornby shrugged.

"The old guys said the whole continent used to be a shitshow. War everywhere, and all the refugees escaping Asia made it worse for a while."

"I spent a little time in Mexico keeping cartels out of small towns," Giago said.

"Most of my service was hunting pirates in the Indian Ocean." He frowned and pointed a fork at me when my head tilted.

"No, I wasn't Navy. The Army has more boats than those cruise liner flunkies."

"I didn't say anything," I replied, holding my hands up in surrender.

"You were thinking it. Nobody knows Army Watercraft exists, even though we do all of the work. The Navy doesn't go into fights like we do."

"Pirate hunting, though?" I asked.

"What was that like?"

"99% waiting for a target. We took them at sea if we had to, but our orders prioritized finding their hideouts. If we could find out where they holed up between runs, we had a better chance of eliminating the entire outfit. Some of these guys had six or seven boats under their command, if you can believe it. Sinking one boat was never enough to put them out of business completely."

"Hideouts? Like classic pirate coves and secret docks?"

"We weren't hunting Blackbeard," Giago replied.

"The South Asia coast is a mess, but there are plenty of places to hide. When you get over to the Bay of Bengal, got islands to work with too." Hornby took a long drink of water.

"Any of them pose an actual threat? Hard to imagine a bunch of grubby guys on salvaged boats going toe-to-toe with actual military." Giago wobbled his head as he thought.

"Open water, no, they didn't have a chance, so they usually ran. They almost always had slaves, though. We couldn't just sink them and move on, and the fuckers knew that. Same thing happened when we hit them on land. They used slaves like shields so they could buy time to get away." This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

"Where'd they get slaves?" Hornby asked.

"Prisoners from boats they captured."

"Damn." I agreed with Hornby. That sounded like a terrible fate to endure. Sergeant Major Cook announced to the camp, "We're breaking camp at 0500; that means loaded and heading to our next gate at 0500. If you're not packed and ready, you can walk home." That was as good a reason as any to retire to my tent and try to get some sleep. The rain woke me up a little after 2 a. m. The drizzle was steady and unrelenting, and the ground beneath me softened like a sponge.

My tent was reasonably waterproof, and I had a tarp under me, so I wasn't lying directly on wet ground. Staying dry helped, but wet soil sucked the warmth right out of my bones. The next day was nonstop rain, and the support Humvee got stuck in mud on the way to our first gate. We didn't have to dig it out ourselves like Hornby and Giago had to do when they were in the Army, and we weren't waylaid for long.

With no trees around to use as an anchor, the support team hammered a land anchor the size of a fence post into the ground and then used a winch to pull the vehicle out of the gritty, wet slop. The whole pitstop took less than 30 minutes. They were well-practiced at resolving this exact problem, and they skipped the stages of bullshit denial I saw whenever a car got stuck in the States.

They didn't mess with trying to rock it free or hitting the gas a few times, hoping that this next tire spin would be more effective than the last. They confirmed they were stuck, radioed that status, and out came the winch and anchors. We ran a bugbear gate heavy on shamans and then a dungeon of gnolls–both C-ranked. The bugbear shamans pushed us a bit, but I kept hearing Agent Kipinksi from the EPA talking about how wild bugbears were way worse than the dungeon variety. I had to agree.

Cave combat limited them in every way, creating a structured cadence of encounters that wouldn't be possible in a forest. Megan and I both got injured on that run. I took a fireball to my left side, and she got a decent slice across her left shoulder. Neither were life-threatening, but I was grateful to have a competent white magic spellblade following us. We got fixed up and went back to crawling.

During the commute between gates, I asked our driver why we camped outside instead of sheltering inside of gates where we knew the weather was more predictable. His answer: the Army didn't like being trapped in an interdimensional corner, and camping in a gate also meant leaving the convoy unprotected. I wasn't happy about what that meant for sleeping conditions, but that reasoning made sense to me.

The rain hadn't slowed the entire day, so we were given an option when we stopped for the night: Pitch your tent outside like normal, or sleep upright in a Humvee. Everyone chose Humvees, and Megan swapped places with our driver so she could bunk with us for the night.

"How's everyone doing on XP?" she asked, continuing her amazing performance of acting like Hornby and Giago's reluctance to follow her command didn't bother her. They answered: Hornby's XP Progress to Level 12: 20, 111 / 102, 400 Giago's XP Progress to Level 12: 19, 875 / 102, 400 I pulled up my system profile to check my own: XP Progress to Level 12: 93, 401 / 102, 400"So Dorion is the only one who didn't level up?" Megan asked.

"What unlocks did everyone take?" It occurred to me in that moment that we had not been given any orders or guidance around our build decisions. When Enforcer Grensmith was part of a similar program years back, the CDM chose their builds for them. That either wasn't the case for this new pilot, or someone forgot to tell us that it was. But I wasn't going to complain. At this stage of my crawling career, I would have been resistant to anyone but me deciding what was next for my build.

Megan had her multiclass planned out, so I knew what she took for her next level of cleric: Prayers of Mercy Class: Cleric Type: Spells Learn the prayers Heal, Mending, and Divine Rest. Strength of prayers is based on your wisdom and your overall level. Her build would never be as powerful as a pure cleric or white mage, but Heal and Mending could save a party if the situation was dire. Heal would stop bleeding and close wounds, and Mending fixed broken bones.

She couldn't patch us up to 100% the way Cook's team had done for us earlier that day, but no one in our party was likely to die from blood loss or be permanently sidelined by a broken ankle with Prayers of Mercy in our arsenal. After so long of running without healers, both on crawls and in our wild hunts, I very much liked having a new safety net.

"I didn't take anything yet," Hornby admitted.

"Same," Giago echoed.

"The Army chose for us based on our jobs. I assumed this gig would have the same rules." Hornby nodded. That's what he thought too.

"Well, holding off on leveling up makes every run from now on more dangerous than it has to be," Megan said.

"They knew we were being sent here to level. If they were making these choices for us, they would have–or should have–said something before this started."

"The spellblade path is pretty basic, I guess," Hornby replied. And he wasn't wrong. Simply by multiclassing, Hornby and Giago both got access to the same base spells: Arrow, Create Food, Create Water, Create Fire, Light, and Prestidigitation.

For his white magic specialty, Hornby could pick from the following: School of Mercy - Heal, Mending, Minor Regeneration, Divine Rest School of Protection - Barrier, Shield, Resistance (Physical), Resistance (Magic) School of Insight - Scan, Listen, Find North, Third Eye School of Exorcism - Turn Undead, Detect Undead, Holy Arrow, Holy Light School of Inspiration - Strength, Agility, Accuracy The usual choice for a spellblade was the School of Mercy.

Healing magic was too useful to ignore, and most of the people multiclassing into white mage had spent a significant portion of their careers not having a healer around. They knew firsthand how valuable it could be. Protection and Inspiration were the next most popular choices, but spellblades who went that route were usually in guilds or on teams, which meant their party was likely to have a pure white mage supporting them.

With healing taken care of, buffs and protection spells added a great deal of utility to the party, even if that was limited to the spellblade casting on themselves when they went into battle.

"I would pick School of Mercy," Hornby added after thinking for a while.

"I assumed that would be the plan anyway." Megan looked around the cab of the Humvee to see Giago and me nodding.

"Looks like all of us agree with you." Hornby took a deep breath.

"Here goes."

"Giago?" Megan asked.

"School of Elemental Magic," he answered. Hearing that was a relief. Like Hornby, Giago had five schools of magic to choose from for this unlock: School Elemental Magic - Bolt, Fire, Ice, Stone School of Ailments - Poison, Weaken, Clumsy School of Summoning - Summon Animal, Summon Minor Elemental School of Force - Slash, Push, Pull School of Illusion - Dark, Fog, Blur, Projection For our party, we desperately needed access to elemental damage.

With an actual mage in the group, we wouldn't have to rely on breach pens to kill trolls, for example. I very much liked that possibility because more and more, being that close to any monster felt unnatural for me. I was at my best when I could use my bow. Tackling a half-dead monster to stab it in the head with a thermite stick meant dropping my bow completely in most cases, and that bothered me deeply. Ailments and Force were the next most popular choices after Elemental Magic.

Those spell options had a great deal of obvious utility for the right party. Debuffing bosses was a major advantage, and a swordsman who used Force magic could be an ultra-dangerous frontliner. No one disagreed with Giago's choice.

"Done," he announced.

"These unlocks don't change our tactics all that much yet," Megan said.

"Hornby, you're still playing backrow floater with your bow. Giago, you're staying with me, but if the enemy has a backrow threat, like more fucking shamans, I might call for you to step back and target them with magic. Otherwise, conserve your mana for the boss fight." Giago didn't say anything, but he didn't argue either. He only nodded. Which was an improvement over him being blatantly combative with Megan. Not long after that discussion, we settled into our seats to try to sleep.

I managed alright, but Hornby had the loudest snore I ever heard in my life. I think all of us considered kicking him out of the Humvee or smothering him to death to be done with it.