Chương 116: 112: Discretion Advised

I was pretty sure I knew what that "wow" was about. Leon's eyes flickered back and forth, shifting from me to the blank look people had when they were looking at their HUD.

"Are you really—? Discretion advised, does that mean—" He'd better not pull a Cody on me. We'd been having a perfectly nice conversation about dogs. I kept walking, and he started again, hurrying to catch up.

"I'm not sure rescuing a bunch of strangers is showing discretion," he muttered. He might have thought I couldn't hear him, but [Senses Beyond Sight] worked its magic.

"Sad, but true," I said.

"Not that I'm complaining," he added, this time intending it for my ears.

"Watching your dog tear through those mannequins was the best part of my day."

"Not the pizza?"

"Okay, that was pretty good, too." He grinned at me.

"Oh, did y'all get the extraordinary luck achievement, too?" Pen asked. Our brief slowdown meant everyone was catching up with us. Jack snorted.

"Is that what you're calling it? I mean, it fits, but the risk is probably just as real. Maybe it should be the 'Now Things Are Gonna Get Fun' achievement."

"You have such odd ideas about what's fun, Jack," I said.

"Aw, come on. Didn't you love the rats?" He'd gotten ahead of us, so he turned to walk backward and look at me while he talked.

"Sewers, my fave. It's the smell, so piquant." He laughed.

"Okay, what about the spiders?" I shuddered.

"Ugh, don't remind me."

"What were you saying about an achievement?" Bobby asked. Jack's backward walk had slowed us down enough that all the others had caught up.

"Discretion advised," Leon answered him, voice dry.

"That ship has pretty much sailed," I told him, thinking of MIN. Sure, maybe the enclaves were less than 1% of the population, but people talked. Way too much, in my opinion.

"Everyone knows who Olivia is," Pen volunteered.

"She's famous." I tried to make my cringe subtle. By which I mean I hung my head, groaned in pretend pain, then looked up at the ceiling and said, "Why me, universe? Why me?"

"Can I tell them?" Jack asked. I shrugged, tacit permission. Whatever. It wasn't going to be a secret from them for long. I wasn't going to be pushy about it, but if I could give them +3 to an attribute, I think we'd all agree that suffering through a little conversation was worth it. Jack explained to the entire group, complete with Vanna White-style hand gestures to indicate me.

For an awkward moment, I felt like a spotlight was centered on my head, and I should start singing or tap-dancing or something equally ridiculous. My moment was saved by Gus, who leaped off Pen's shoulder and attacked a clothes rack with a snarling hiss. Not a mannequin, which might have made sense, but a display rack of long-sleeved shirts. For a moment, I thought he'd lost his little cat mind, and then the clothes started fighting back. I recoiled, the dogs barked, almost everyone exclaimed, and the battle began.

Weapons that do not work well against seemingly sentient and violent clothing: baseball bats, a shovel, dog teeth when used in isolation. Weapons that do: fishing gaffs, cat claws, and at least two dogs working together to play tug-of-war. Hunting knives, whether tied to a kayak handle or wielded by a back-stabbing rogue or shadow mage, were acceptable, although it would have taken forever to defeat all the monsters one stab at a time. Fireballs, super bad news. Bear spray, thank goodness no one tried.

The first couple of minutes were chaos, mostly because it was so unexpected. I'd been ready for more mannequins and maybe, in the back of my mind, I'd been expecting something like rats or spiders. Maybe even bugs. But pieces of fabric that flew into your face and tried to smother you by climbing down your throat were just not on my radar. It was a good thing that those of us who were toughest were in the forefront, because those first minutes actually might have been deadly. The worst were the neckties.

They were so stealthy. They slithered along the ground like subtle snakes, inched their way up the backs of legs and along spines, gently slid around throats, and then—and only then—moved into strangle mode. We might have lost Bobby to one of them, except that Pen glanced back in time to see him struggling, face already red and swelling. She exclaimed, pointed, and Jack shadow-stepped to him. The tie had cinched itself into a flawless four-in-hand and was already so tight that Jack couldn't yank it off.

He had to slice Bobby free. Unfortunately, he cut Bobby too, but Pen tossed a heal on him so fast he barely bled. Bent over, coughing and hacking, Bobby managed to spit out, "Ties! I hate ties!" The Indiana Jones callback was probably unintentional, but everyone laughed, maybe as much from relief as the humor in the words. But then a sweater tried to jump Jeff, and Tessa threw a fireball at it. Not a good idea. I'm sure it was just instinct.

Tessa had leveled up three times when she was alone in the mall, so her reflexes were on a hair trigger. Fireballs work great against clothing, as long as you're willing to burn your allies, too. I'd only brought Pen because I didn't want to navigate Jack and Megan's fight, but I was so glad I had. She was healing Jeff before he had time to do more than give a muffled scream through the melting fabric on his face.

Tessa was distraught, understandably, but Jeff had finally gotten enough experience that he could enter the System. Ninety seconds later, he was a Level 1 Thorn's Shepherd, fully healed, and recipient of +3 to his Resilience for having received the Brush with Greatness achievement. I guess my conversation with him when we'd been walking through the other instance had been enough to have it hovering in wait for the moment he entered the System. After two near catastrophes in a row, we got more organized.

Jack took charge, fortunately, because I would have had no idea how to turn a bunch of middle school teachers into a party. I mean, real world, a couple of bottles of wine, maybe a six-pack of beer, and a birthday cake might have done it. Streamers and party hats if I were desperate, loud music inevitably. But Jack split us into teams, five people, two animals per, called us parties and sent us off in opposite directions. (Okay, fine, yes, my memories of WoW are sketchy, but not that sketchy.) This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. Bear and Zelda came with me; Riley and Gus went with Jack. Jack kept Pen. When I narrowed my eyes at him, a hint of a flush appeared on his cheeks. He lifted his chin and pointedly said to my teammates (Tracy, Mike, Bobby, and Javi), "Make sure you listen to Olivia. Ask her questions if you think of any. We want everyone to get the Brush with Greatness achievement, if at all possible.

It's worth three attribute points and maybe a rare class, so try hard." I stopped narrowing my eyes and dipped my own chin. Fair point. None of the people on my team had the achievement yet, so he could keep Pen and the people who did. He also kept Tessa. Under the circumstances, that did seem like a good idea, just in case of future fireball accidents. And that's not criticism: of the entire Spruce Gap Middle Group, Tessa had been the one who chose to fight and fought hard enough to hit Level 3.

If that trauma had made her a little careless, I understood. Empathized, even. Nothing but luck let JJ survive my Wild Sanctuary. Jack also kept Jeff and Leon, and since they both had already gotten the Brush with Greatness achievement, that made sense, too. My team's trek through our side of the store was less eventful than our first few minutes in the store had been. We took it slowly, defeating one monster at a time instead of letting them pile up on us.

The ties were still the worst, but the women's formal dress selection was a close second. The dresses tried to wrap themselves around us like giant boa constrictors. We were still there when the other team caught up to us.

"Any sign of a boss?" Jack asked. I deferred to my teammates before answering. Javi in particular seemed like more of a gamer than me, although Tracy might have been a close second. Maybe she knew the jargon from her students, but the way she used it felt fluid. I bet she sat at home with a headset on, chatting with her guildmates in WoW, or whatever had replaced it, at least five nights a week. I hadn't asked, though.

I understood, just as she probably did, that online animated violence was nothing whatsoever like that actual act of stabbing a goblin through the heart and watching it die. Javi said no, but Tracy gestured toward the fitting rooms and a door with a golden crown emblem on it.

"Radiates boss to me," she said, "but we haven't checked yet."

"It's the women's dressing room," Bobby said.

"We're not going in there." Mike, Javi, Leon, and Jeff all made exactly the same murmur of agreement. Consensus: for a guy working in a middle school, entering the women's dressing room was the kiss of death. Fortunately, Tessa didn't feel the same way. And maybe she was a little frustrated by the fact that her bear spray and fireballs had been more dangerous than useful when fighting clothing.

Because she flung the door of the fitting room open, and when the ornate sequined monstrosity inside stirred to life, she blasted it. We all wound up retreating until the fire died down, and then Bear picked her way in and retrieved the loot: a pair of gloves and another badge. The gloves weren't winter gear, but evening wear. [Analyze] told me they had +3 Intelligence. Clearly mage gloves, and Tessa had made the kill, so we handed them to her. She handed us something even better, though.

When she saw the badge, she said, "Oh, I got one of those from the toys," and pulled another badge out of her pocket. When I put her badge from the evil toys, my badge from the mannequins, and the badge from Lacy's clothing monsters on top of one another, they melted together, forming a single badge that read Mall Security. I was sure we'd just found the key to the boss. Now we had to find the boss itself.

"Anyone get any loot they want me to identify?" I asked the other team. The clothes hadn't dropped much. Maybe one in every five monsters left behind a piece of fabric or a button, both just crafting components. The objects we found, like the weapons from the sporting goods store and the pizza, felt like the real treasures. It turned out to be the same for the other team; lots of fabric, none of it exciting, although Pen thought she could make "a real nice quilt" out of the pieces.

Unsurprisingly, everyone handed their pieces over to her. We set off on the search for the final boss. Bear roamed ahead, happy to be exploring again. It felt like it ought to be obvious. The badge had to open a door, right? But what door? Where? By the time we reached the wing with the evil toys and the pizza, Bear was happily slaughtering the toys, grabbing the dolls by their heads, tossing them into the air, then shaking them into pieces on the way down.

We didn't really need to fight the toys, since we already had the toy badge, but Bear hadn't gotten the memo. Zelda yelped, No fair!, and joined in on the fun. Riley glanced at me for permission, and at my rueful nod, entered the fray, too. Bobby, still wearing his catcher's gear, said, "I thought I was going to do that."

"Go for it." I gestured at the toys with an open hand. Tessa muttered, "They're making it look so easy. It wasn't." I gave her a sympathetic look, and then moved to stand next to her. All the people on my team had gotten the Brush with Greatness achievement as we wandered the department store, via one conversation after another. To be honest, I was really sick of talking. I'd spoken more words aloud today than I usually did in a month. But Tessa was the last one who needed the achievement.

"Any questions for me?" I asked her.

"You need 'significant guidance' from me to get an achievement, but it seems like it can be about almost anything."

"How can I move around the rifts like you do?" she asked so promptly that it was obvious she'd had the question ready.

"You left and came back with people two minutes later, and they weren't hanging out outside. Where'd you get them? How'd they get here?"

"Great question," I replied.

"I picked them up at an enclave and brought them back through the rift, but I can do that because of a title I got on the first day of the integration. I don't know how other people would get the ability. Um, give me a minute. Chelsea?" Chelsea popped into my view in her pixie form, hovering right next to Tessa's shoulder.

"Only a Rift Keeper is capable of traveling between rifts."

"Only a Rift Keeper is capable of traveling between rifts," I parroted back to Tessa.

"So how do I become a Rift Keeper?" Tessa asked.

"What do I need to do?" Chelsea spun in a circle over her shoulder, clapping her hands, and dripping glitter everywhere.

"Yes, yes, yes! Such a good question!" She came to a stop and said, "The System monitors progress toward the Rift Keeper class, tracking all rift-related activities and assigning them point values as determined by the Rift Management Oversight Board. When an individual demonstrates basic rift mastery, they're invited to apply for the class. Their application is submitted to the highest-level, native-born Rift Keeper on the planet for approval." She put particular emphasis on the words 'native-born.'

I blinked at her.

"Me?" Tessa looked around, as if wondering if I was talking to her or someone else.

"I'm talking to my interface," I told her, not wanting to get into the details of PICs and pixies and mana constructs.

"I've got access to an information source through it."

"Ah, okay." Tessa nodded, and her eyes shifted focus. She'd only been in the System for a little while, so she probably hadn't had a chance to check out her own interface yet. The dogs and Bobby were wrapping up the toy destruction. Javi and Mike had joined in, too, smashing dolls with their baseball bats. Pen was healing any of the guys who got hit with the acid spray. The dogs were so high-level that they weren't even bothered by it.

"We're going to grab the pizzas," Jeff called to Tessa and me. She nodded, still distracted by her interface, and I waved them on. They all headed down the wing toward the pizza place.

"So how many points does it take to become a Rift Keeper?" I asked Chelsea. She wrinkled her nose.

"Kind of a lot," she said apologetically.

"One thousand to reach Rank 1, which is where you already are. That's a thousand instance harvests. Clears are worth more, reports even more, and there's a bonus for first survey, which is the first time you successfully complete an unfamiliar rift, whether by harvest or clear." A thousand harvests. Ugh. I'd spent one hellish day running through the Dollar General over and over again. It took five harvests total to clear it. How many points would that have been?

"You could only claim it because you were already a Rift Keeper," Chelsea responded to my thoughts.

"So I won't include those points. For first survey, five harvests, and a single clear of a Tier 1 rift, you would have gotten 17 points. If you'd submitted a rift report, it would have been 27." So if someone could do that for a couple months, they could become a Rift Keeper, too. That didn't seem so bad. It had been an exhausting day, but maybe with a break in between it could work. One day on, one day off. Three, four months, easy.

"Well, no," Chelsea said.

"Ten points were for first survey. You'd have to find a new rift every day to reach those numbers. And you can only file one report on any given rift per year, and it's only worth ten points if no one's reported on it in the last five years."

"All right, let's just call it a thousand instance harvests, then. Ugh."

"Close enough," Chelsea said brightly.

"And then what was that about approvals?" I asked. Chelsea smiled.