Chương 85: 83: The Easy Quest

When I left the cafe, headed for Jack's address in North Carolina, I had three quests. (Three dogs, too, of course, but that was to be expected.) The quests were not my choice. I tried convincing Chelsea that my mental model included picking quests from a catalog, or maybe a nice online shopping interface, where I could compare prices, risk-reward ratios, profit margins, maybe even percentage chances of success. No luck, though.

Instead, the quests popped up in my notifications list, just as if the System had always been in charge of assigning them. They were definitely written by the System, too. They had that charming flavor of bureaucratese that I remembered from the challenge scenario. The first was probably the simplest. Quest: Field Documentation Protocol Quest Briefing: Rift Keepers are responsible for the assessment, classification, and reporting of managed rift activity.

Accurate reports improve System modeling; reduce instability risk; and support planetary mana management, rift progression tracking and future resource allocation. Objective: Compile rift reports with associated rift ratings. Reports must include: rift designation, tier, environment, denizens, resources, stability, mana density, mana flow, instance outcome, and recommended status. Submit completed field reports and rift ratings for 10 rifts.

(0/10) Rewards: 100 credits Note: A rift instance must be fully harvested in order to complete an acceptable report and provide a valid rating. One report per rift. The quest is repeatable upon completion. Paperwork, in other words. Of course, it also required me to complete ten different rifts, which wasn't exactly a minor job. I wouldn't be finishing this one anytime soon. I wasn't sure whether or not I hoped the second one would be easier.

It read: Quest: Local Population Stabilization Quest Briefing: Early integration survival outcomes improve significantly when high-risk individuals are removed from immediate peril and connected to stable shelter, medical care, or defensible community structures. Your current authority, mobility, and demonstrated intervention pattern make you suitable for targeted rescue operations. Objective: Rescue 5 people from perilous conditions.

(0/5) Qualifying conditions may include active monster threat, critical injury without local treatment access, unstable shelter, coercive confinement, hostile sapient control, or environmental collapse. Rewards: Credits based on difficulty and outcome Potential attribute or skill development based on the means of rescue Improved local stability metrics So, the good news was, rescuing people, yay! I liked that. But the bad news was, could the quest and its rewards be more vague?

What the hell would count as a rescue? Had I rescued Katie? Yes, in my opinion. But no, according to the qualifying conditions. Pen? Maybe, if her home constituted coercive confinement. But was living at home really confinement? Even if her family were assholes? Plus, she'd run away herself. I hadn't rescued her. (I bet her family would have called it kidnapping if I had. Not quite tomato, to-mah-to.) Danny? Clearly no. Nat? Definitely not. JJ and Alma? Solid maybes. The baby who needed formula?

Well, for the moment perhaps, but we should probably ask the mother about that in three weeks. It looked to me like only Joey really counted, under the "critical injury without local treatment access" qualification. I might be able to "rescue" a shit ton of people without the System ever giving me credit for it. It might only notice the people I jumped in front of a bullet for. A metaphorical bullet, obviously. So Joey, yes, and everyone else, probably not.

Unless the System and I could come to some kind of realistic assessment of what "rescue" meant, this quest sucked. The third quest was probably the easiest, but definitely the most depressing. Quest: Threat Reduction Initiative (Repeatable) Quest Briefing: Hostile entities reduce sapient population viability, disrupt local stabilization, and increase pressure on enclave and non-enclave survivor groups.

Active threats may include hostile rift denizens, mana-crazed fauna, autonomous hostile constructs, invasive mana entities, and other entities assessed as immediate threats to sapient survival. Targeted elimination of active threats improves regional survival probability. Objective: Neutralize 100 entities classified as active threats to Earth's population base. (0/100) Rewards: Variable credits based on difficulty. Important: Unjustified killing of sapient entities does not qualify. One hundred monsters.

Or, you know, beings. One hundred living creatures that I should kill so that Earth would be safer. It hadn't even been a week since I killed that first mana-crazed squirrel, and now I was confidently planning mass murder, thinking it was the easiest of the quests. But it was. And the dogs and I would probably finish this quest long before saving any lives. Woo-hoo! Speaking of which, I'd asked Chelsea about the dogs' participation, and she'd let me know we counted as a team.

So any kills that Zelda, Bear, and Riley made on their own would count for my quest. For our quest. I stepped into rift N7W12S#731 from my RMI. The entry point was a cave, stone walls, stone floor, and it was hot. Really hot. Like so hot that even a native Floridian thought, "Ugh." Riley—the only one of my dogs who, to be honest, could afford to lose a few pounds—started panting immediately, and I said, "Don't worry, we're not staying."

We turned and stepped out of the rift onto the much cooler streets of Durham, North Carolina. I took a deep breath in relief, then gagged. Things had died here. Not a surprise, but ugh, it stunk. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. At some point, the authorities were gonna have to stop running around like chickens with their heads cut off and get their acts together. Dead bodies—whether human or monster—were hazards.

Leaving them lying around the streets meant poisoning the water supply at the very least. Also, I thought, as my heart started to race and my throat closed up, they were providing food for rats. Really, really big rats. Rats that were not your typical gray Norway rats, but were—okay, going to attack. Attacking, in fact. Fortunately, I was not alone.

Because at some point in my misspent youth, I'd read 1984, and so the idea of rats munching on my face triggered my freeze reflex like nothing else I'd encountered in the past week. While I was frozen in some mix of shock, horror, and bone-deep fear, my dogs were responding to their own instincts. And dogs—specifically terriers—had a very different reaction to rats than I did. Zelda launched herself into the air.

I'm not gonna say that her tail was spinning like a helicopter with delight, but I'm not gonna say it wasn't, either. I was motionless, dissociation skill kicking in like nobody's business, but she was in terrier nirvana. Fifteen pounds of terrier collided with fifteen pounds of rat, and it wasn't even a negotiation: one was predator, one was prey, and the prey was getting shaken around like a chew toy before it had time to do more than squeak. Turns out, even very big rats squeak.

Riley and Bear were a little slower off the block, by which I mean I'd almost taken a breath by the time they were ripping into the rats like blenders v. strawberries. Good blenders. Ninjas, maybe. I wouldn't know how many rats there were—lots! —except that the quest pane in my HUD was dinging like a diner's order up bell at rush hour. By the time I was willing to take a tentative step forward, my Threat Reduction Initiative quest was reading 16/100. It took maybe two minutes.

The dogs were so pleased with themselves. Zelda's white fur was stained red with blood, none of it hers. I knew none of it was hers, because she was wagging her tail and bouncing around, saying, Did you see? Did you see?" You are not a rat terrier," I told her, trying to keep my voice steady.

"Just, you know, fyi. Jack Russells chase badgers." She dropped into a hunting crouch. I could take a badger. Show me. I will kill it." Love," I started, and then I shut up. Last week, I would have told her that we didn't kill things. That we were civilized people. That I'd get her a new toy to rip apart if she was feeling destructive. This week? Yeah, I wasn't gonna complain that I didn't have to be the one to kill the rats. Bear and Riley were a little less exuberant, but equally satisfied.

Bear was nosing the biggest rat's body as if wondering whether it might be right for a little snack, and Riley was almost leaning against my leg, as if to say I'm here, you're safe, I'm here. I put my hand on his neck, just to remind myself that yes, I was safe. The big rat's body disappeared in a poof. I jumped and made an exasperated noise, annoyed with myself for being startled. The rats must be rift creatures, escaped from the rift during the first wave of mana, and so of course they had loot.

Real rats wouldn't even be worth touching, but rift rats were a different story.

"Anything good?" I asked Bear. Delicately, she picked up something small and metallic with her teeth and carried it over to me. She dropped it into my hand with an attitude of No idea. Looks boring. She wasn't wrong. It was a ring, made from some dull-colored metal—pewter, maybe? Hopefully not lead. It was plain, not exactly pretty, and not something I would usually choose to wear. [Analyze] told me it was a Ring of Keen Senses, adding +2 to my Perception.

Nothing special, but maybe I could sell it back to the System. I stuck it on my finger for safekeeping and looked around me. We were in a nice suburban neighborhood slash war zone. I'm gonna say, upon careful consideration (ten seconds, tops) that whatever had hit this neighborhood was worse than what had run through Jules' neighborhood in San Celeste. Every car was a burned-out wreck, most garages and some houses the same. It looked like something had ignited all the gasoline everywhere. Monsters? Or just mana?

It was a nice neighborhood: two-story houses with front porches, porch swings, flags both American and rainbow, but it had definitely been through some shit. There must have been rain since it happened, because nothing appeared to still be burning, but the smell of smoke was heavy in the air. I was tempted to just step back into the rift and go home for another cup of tea. Maybe some lunch. But there were people moving in the wreckage down the street and Jack's address was less than a mile away.

I should at least go look.

"Stay close," I told the dogs, and with my little pack clustered around me, I started walking. Something moved to my left, and I jumped, spinning in that direction. It was our reflection in a window. Classic. I kept walking, staying in the middle of the street, away from the driveways with their burnt-out cars and the trees that could be hiding anything in their foliage. Anything being monsters, of course. I didn't want to get jumped by any more mana-crazed squirrels. I felt eyes on us, though.

At least some of these houses were still occupied. From behind locked doors and boarded-up windows, people were watching. It was creepy. I didn't see anything to be afraid of. The dogs had already killed an entire pack of rats. Did rats have packs? No, their packs had a fancy name, didn't they? Murder? No, that was crows. Maybe I should get Warden's Edge out. It might be awkward to explain why I was carrying a shovel to the people at the end of the street, though.

I glanced that way, then realized the people were gone. Okay, that was odd, too. I pulled out Warden's Edge. Yep, it was a security blanket, but infinitely better than putting my keys between my knuckles the way I used to do when walking to my car after dark. Zelda nudged my leg. Her tail was wagging hopefully. More rats? More? Badgers?

"Are you telling me or asking me?" I asked her warily. Bear woofed. Telling. That way. Coming this way. Her intent eyes told me which way she meant: it was the way we were walking, of course. Riley let out a full-throated bark, not quite a howl, but a proclamation of intent. A door swung open on a house a couple doors up. A woman leaned out.

"Run! Get out of the road! Hurry!" Her head swung away from me, looking up the street, then back to me.

"Run!" Her tone told me she already knew it was too late. Then the door slammed shut. Oh, well, that wasn't worrisome at all.

"All right, pups," I said.

"I think we're up." I heard them first. Not squeaking, but an almost musical murmur, like a white noise generator's static setting. Then they came around the corner. It was a flood, a tidal wave of rats, covering the road from curb to curb. Big, medium, small, although small was relative because even the small ones were the biggest rats I'd ever seen. A sickly brown mana emanated from them like a cartoonish depiction of body odor.

"Fuck," I breathed out the word. We should have run. The dogs did not share my reservations. They leaped into the fray like kids at Christmas ripping apart wrapping paper with complete abandon. Zelda did her size thing and grew enormous, tackling one of the leaders. Bear went for efficiency, snap, shake, snap, shake, killing one at a time in quick strokes. Riley growled by my side, then waded into the stream, ignoring the little ones but taking out the bigger ones with sharp bites.

I flipped Warden's Edge, so that the blade was down and started swinging it like a golf club or maybe a broom, sweeping rats away from me with ruthless, clear-eyed strength, ignoring the way their bodies crunched when hit. [Verdant Reprisal] triggered. Bougainvillea spears burst out of the asphalt, impaling rats in a twenty-foot radius, and continued to grow as the blood dripped down the thorns.

I had to pause in my sweeping to stifle my gag reflex as the vines wove their way across the road, not just a barricade, but a death zone. A few of the smaller rats escaped, running off the road into the nearby yards, but most died disgustingly gory deaths, skin splitting open, guts spilling out. Their bodies formed a bloody mat of fur and flesh festooning a low hedge of bright pink flowers and shiny green leaves. Mischief. That was what a pack of rats was called. A mischief of rats.

"Well," I said, breathing hard.

"Uh… we might want to backtrack and look for a cross street." The woman who'd warned us was out on her porch, clutching the railing like it was the only thing keeping her upright. I waved to her and yelled, "Thanks for the heads-up! Sorry about the mess. Twenty minutes or so and the plant life will disappear." The blood and guts and gore would remain, but I didn't feel the need to mention that. The loot would, too, though so maybe that would make up for it.

No way was I walking into those thorns for whatever the rat version of bug chitin was. The best loot would probably be only as good as the ring I'd collected a few minutes ago. So not worth it. The woman on the porch nodded acknowledgement, but didn't speak. She was staring at my bougainvillea hedge with the blank gaze of a shell-shocked survivor. If I were a little closer, I'd offer her some tips for coping with PTSD, but it would have felt silly to shout them across the distance between us.

And for obvious reasons, I wasn't going any closer. [Verdant Reprisal] had never inflicted damage on me or the dogs, but walking through those thorns was not on.

"Anybody hurt? Everybody okay?" I checked the dogs over, looking for bites and scratches, expecting to find some and already thinking about first-aid kits, gauze, antibiotic cream. I should have known better. I opened my notifications and scrolled through the kill list: Level 1, Level 1, Level 2, Level 4, Level 1, Level 3, and so on for much longer than I was actually willing to read.

The highest level rat that I'd personally killed was Level 6, which must have been the big one in the back that got caught by [Verdant Reprisal]. The dogs were fine, and so was I. This low-level pool of monsters couldn't even break our skin. But I tabbed over to my quest pane to look at the Threat Reduction Initiative. 243/100. I'd been right. That was the easy quest.