Chương 178: CDM 3, Chapter 54: Sufficiently Advanced

"Dude…" Nathan said when an ad for DungeonDuel–get a free $100 to bet–started to play. Megan read from her phone.

"'Talatal Ghar had four levels above ground and three underground as well as several hidden tunnels for citizens to escape in case of invaders.'""Did you say 'three?'" Hornby asked.

"Yep."

"Damn. So there could be a whole boatload of locals in there."

"I don't get what they wanted to hide," Giago added.

"It's not a secret that there are still people in the wilds."

"Maybe the concern is that their contestants got taken hostage?" Kwame suggested. Giago thought.

"Yeah, maybe. We know they survived, though. Louis and Val have been tweeting about it, so they didn't die."

"Louis didn't die," I pointed out.

"We don't know if anything happens to the crew."

"Alright, fair." Giago conceded.

"Are we thinking their gear is looted from crawlers?" Beth asked.

"We didn't get a look under the ponchos, but the weapons looked expensive."

"Has to be," Megan answered.

"Maybe not," de Saint said, her focus still mostly on her phone.

"Dorion helped me design an enchanter build before Stage 2 had really hit. I get a bit obsessive about interests, so I might have read a lot of books and watched a few hours of YouTube videos on enchanting." Nathan laughed.

"A little obsessive? I think you're in good company there, Rainy." De Saint smiled.

"I guess I'm still not used to that, but I didn't recognize the enchanting technique on the sword. R/enchanting is going nuts because nobody recognizes it."

"What are we saying?" Giago asked.

"If they looted it from a crawler, they lucked into something improbably unique. The alternative explanation is that they have different enchanting techniques, which then begs the question, how do they compare to ours?" A Nad-Nade commercial featuring scantily clad women in crawler gear partying beneath the flashing lights of a club finished playing, and the show resumed. The door to the chamber where Louis and the crew were being held opened.

The same man with the pillows entered, followed by four younger men with large clay pitchers of water and a few clay cups. They offered water to the crawlers and went as far as pouring it for them. The leader stood in front of Louis and pointed at his own stomach, followed by the pantomime of putting food in his mouth and chewing. He finished by pointing at Louis with a questioning expression. Louis glanced around the room and swallowed.

"Yes," he said, nodding.

"We would eat." The man waved them to follow him out of the room. No crawler or crew member, Louis included, looked enthused about going to an unknown place with their captor, but they followed Louis' lead and exited. They walked along the wide wall for a moment, venturing toward another set of buildings that was out of sight from where they came in. They stepped under a stone arch and descended a set of stairs worn down by centuries of foot traffic.

The group ventured through a dark tunnel lit only by what light could follow them in from the surface and stopped at a dead end. Where everything around them was ancient brick, this wall looked as if it were one massive stone. The leader reached into a small cubby in the wall to his right, and a lower-thirds message appeared to explain. A bell rang on the other side but was too faint for our mics to record.

The stone slid to the side, which was curious because it looked to be about a foot thick, yet it moved with the ease of an automatic door at a supermarket.

"The hell?" de Saint mumbled. A man wearing something like a kilt made from animal skins and no shirt pressed his back against the wall to allow the leader and the crawlers following behind him to pass. The tunnel continued on but was lit by glowing stones embedded into the walls every four feet or so.

"So… that ain't electric, is it?" Hornby asked, his tone matching de Saint's earlier exclamation. None of us replied because a turn in the tunnel suddenly revealed a hallway lined with arches leading to several side rooms. More men like the one who guarded the stone door watched from those doorways as the crawlers passed. A few seemed curious, but most seemed unhappy to have visitors.

After another stone door was whisked aside, they entered an area similar to the first, except now men, women, and children of all ages watched the procession. Even the elderly looked fit and well-fed. Whatever challenges these people faced living in the wilds, nutrition didn't seem to be one of them. Finally, they entered a banquet hall with a long wooden table lined on either side by benches. The craftsmanship of both was noticeably elegant.

The tables were smooth and even, and the benches and table legs were adorned with intricate carvings and engravings. In addition to the glowing stones in the walls, a row of them ran the length of the table. Because this was underground, the ceiling was still relatively low, giving the illusion that the room was incredibly long. Men and women with a few young children among them stood when they saw the crawlers enter.

The leader gestured for everyone to sit, save for the dozen or so guards who stood against the walls watching every move of the interlopers. When everyone was seated, women appeared with plates of sliced mangos and leaned between guests to set them on the table. The leader, sitting at the head of the table, popped a piece in his mouth and encouraged the crawlers to eat as well. They did, but with visible hesitation. The leader caught Louis' eye.

He pointed to himself, held out his hand, and a shard of ice formed in his palm. He pointed to the man at his right. He too pointed at himself, but he pantomimed drawing a bow instead. The next man made a fist. Both women next to him summoned small balls of fire in their hands. The boy beside them, perhaps 13 years-old, made a spear motion. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"They're telling us their classes," Louis said to his people. To show that he understood, he pointed at the party's Defender and made the motion of raising and bracing behind a shield. He pointed at another party member and drew his arm back like he held a bow. The leader clapped and smiled, nodding enthusiastically. He pointed at Louis and tilted his head. Louis pointed at himself and held up a ball of fire, and then he pantomimed drawing a sword. He was a spellsword. The smiling stopped.

The hosts talked amongst themselves, their brows furrowed and their voices serious. After a minute, the leader turned his attention back to Louis. He pointed at himself and repeated, summoning a bit of ice. Then he pointed at Louis. The streamer exaggerated his nod, attempting to show that he understood. He summoned a small fireball and then drew and swung an imaginary sword. That set off another wave of concerned murmurs. One of the younger girls, perhaps 9 or 10, spoke to the leader with a pleading voice.

He sighed but ultimately acquiesced and passed the slate and chalk down the table to her. With a giant grin, she pointed at herself, summoned a fireball, and then wrote the number "14" on the board.

"Is she saying she's level 14 or that she is 14-years-old?" Louis asked his party. The Defender was closest to the girl. She pointed at him and passed him the slate. He did the shield motion and wrote 21. She smiled even wider and pointed excitedly for Louis to go next. He pointed at himself and wrote 23. Louis showed the slate to the table. Then he held up his fire, wrote 13, made the sword gesture, and wrote 10. The leader motioned for the slate. The leader wrote 13 + 10 = 23. Louis nodded.

The table erupted in discussions that bordered on arguments.

"They don't have multiclasses," I said.

"They don't understand how Louis can be both a fighter and a mage."

"That makes sense!" de Saint exclaimed.

"They probably haven't figured out how to make refined mana crystals." Louis pointed at the leader and then down to the slate. He understood. He pointed at himself, summoned a fireball, and then scribbled on the slate. He held it up for the table to see.

"Bull-fucking-shit," Giago spat.

"The fuck?" Hornby gasped. I had those same thoughts, but my mouth had simply dropped. I was too shocked to form words. The slate read "46." The screen went black, and an ad for erectile dysfunction gum started to play. Giago turned to address all of us.

"Are they saying that guy is level 46?"

"Dude," Nathan mumbled to himself, his eyes still on the screen.

"That's not possible," Giago continued.

"Maybe he meant that was his age. No one can get to level 46. Or he's lying. He has to be lying, like a bad intimidation tactic or something."

"Them not wanting to release this footage makes more sense if that's his level," Kwame pointed out.

"If the world's strongest person is some rando in the wilds of Asia, that could stir some controversy."

"It's worse than that," I said.

"He's not just the strongest. He's the strongest by an insane margin." Giago shook his head.

"It's not physically possible. What is the XP gap between level 45 and 46? Something like 20 billion?"

"1, 759, 218, 604, 441, 600," de Saint corrected.

"Did you say quadrillion?" She nodded.

"Yeah, see? Even if you're running nothing but S gates, that's just not possible." When the show came back, the slate went around the table, each person writing down their level to show the guests. None of the adults in the room was lower than level 20. The people seated closer to the leader were in the high 30s, with the exception of one man who wrote 41. Everyone with Louis looked ashen, their bodies stiff and their faces stunned.

"They're lying," Louis' white mage said.

"It's a bad bluff." Louis didn't immediately reply. He watched his hosts happily talk amongst one another.

"I don't know," Louis answered eventually.

"Look at how relaxed they are. Do they look like they're afraid of us hurting them?" Each of Louis' people glanced around at the faces lining the table, but didn't respond. They didn't need to. Everyone of them saw what Louis did. Plates of food began to appear. They looked like black beans, steaks, and grilled calamari soaked in a brown sauce. We believe the octopus-like dish was harvested from a squid gate. We do not know the type of beans or meat. The language barrier made conversation over food impractical.

Beyond a few instances of the hosts wanting to know if Louis' people liked their food, nothing remarkable came out of that stretch. The show fast-forwarded through the rest of the meal–I assume to demonstrate that they didn't cut something important. When the food was cleared, Louis attempted to ask the leader more questions, like how many people live here? How long have you lived here? What kind of enchanting techniques are you using? How do you survive with monsters all around?

But the leader either didn't understand or waved the question away without answering. After about an hour at the table, according to a note on the screen from the producers, the leader took Louis' people back to the surface. Instead of going to the stairs where they entered, they stopped in a courtyard inside the walls. Where the outside of the city was overgrown with dense forest, this area had seen so much foot traffic that it was all hard-tamped dirt.

Five stumps as tall as humans stood upright, spaced evenly apart. The leader returned Louis' sword and pointed at one of the stumps. He made the spell motion followed by the gesture for a sword.

"I think he wants me to show him spellsword," Louis said to his party. He stepped forward and drew his blade. Louis sprayed one of the stumps with Water Jet and then darted forward. Blue electricity crackled along his blade as he pumped it with Bolt, then he triggered Power Strike and swung his sword. The stump hissed, crackled, and steamed from the current coursing through dense wood, and the blade sliced clean through, cutting it in half.

That inspired a wave of furrowed brows and hushed conversations from the hosts who stood around watching the demonstration. After a few minutes of discussion, the leader bowed to Louis and his party before opening his arm wide, inviting them to leave. Louis awkwardly returned the bow before he and his party were escorted back to where they were first ambushed. Their weapons were returned, and the locals disappeared back into the jungle. The screen went black. The level claims made by natives were not verified.

Every expert The Wilds: Race Asia spoke to said that accumulating that much XP is believed to be impossible, suggesting that our crawlers were deliberately deceived.

"Louis is tweeting that he believes the hosts," Nathan announced.

"He says, 'I can say for certain that those were the strongest people I've ever met. When you do this as long as I have, you can feel when someone is legit. I do not believe they lied.'" Megan sighed.

"I wish the world would be less interesting for a few months. I can't keep up."

"Do we trust Louis on this?" Beth asked the group.

"It just isn't possible," Giago said.

"This is a marketing stunt. The whole thing is probably staged because of bad ratings or something."

"I can't think of a time when he lied to his fans," Nathan answered.

"Me neither," de Saint echoed. Neither could I, for that matter. Nathan shrugged.

"At least the internet will be fun for the next few days."