Chương 128: Friends Like These

Leo Chen stood in the doorway of what Jimbo called the Bunker Bar, freshly showered and wearing borrowed fatigues that fit well enough. The simple act of putting on something clean and practical had done more for his mood than he expected. Jimbo had described the Bunker Bar as "the officers' club, but underground and sad," which turned out to be accurate on both counts. Fort Kensington was barely a year old, and the bar hadn't had time to grow character yet.

The walls were bare concrete, the furniture was standard-issue, and the fluorescent lighting gave the whole space the ambiance of a government office. The only decorations were a handful of unit insignias mounted near the entrance and a few sports pennants tacked along the back wall. Six or seven officers occupied various seats around the room. Leo let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding.

The room smelled like cheap bourbon and floor cleaner, and the fluorescent buzz overhead was the most boring sound he'd heard in weeks. But he loved it immediately. And it wasn't just because he spotted a Yale Bulldogs pennant tacked to the wall behind the bar, though that certainly helped. Ashviel had been overwhelming. Every moment spent watching his words, navigating cult politics where everyone wanted something from him. And worst of all, it had been a city of goodbyes.

Ella and Thad had left for the Oblivion Cult, and Leo had parted ways dreading the next time he would see them again. Somehow, just meeting a good friend he hadn't seen in a while meant the world to him.

"Come on," Jimbo said, clapping him on the shoulder.

"Let's get you a drink." Leo followed him toward the bar, and as he did, his eyes caught the glint of metal on Jimbo's collar. Captain's bars. O-3. The real thing. The last time Leo had seen Jimbo in uniform, he had been Cadet Captain. Now the cadet part was gone. It annoyed him that Jimbo now outranked him by two full pay grades. Leo was a butter bar. O-1. The rank that existed so other officers had someone to feel superior to. The Staff Sergeant working the counter looked up from the glass he was polishing.

"Captain," he said, nodding to Jimbo.

"What can I get you?"

"Bourbon. Neat." Jimbo glanced at Leo.

"Make it two."

"ID?" Leo blinked.

"Excuse me?" The bartender's expression didn't change.

"Still going to need to see some identification, sir." Leo stared at him. The man couldn't be serious. Leo was a commissioned officer. He outranked this Staff Sergeant. He was standing in an officers-only club in a military installation carved into the bedrock of an alternate dimension, and this man wanted to see his ID.

"I'm a commissioned officer in the United States Air Force," Leo said, tapping his, hopefully useful, butter bar on his shoulder.

"Yes sir."

"I fought in the Boston Catacombs."

"Heard about that, sir. Good work."

"I got sent to a hospital for weeks. Twice. For that flag." Leo pointed through the open doorway to where the American flag hung from its pole near the entrance.

"That sounds rough, sir."

"I'm Leo Chen. Flyer Seven. I'm on jerseys." The bartender finally smiled.

"Oh, I know exactly who you are, sir. Got one of your jerseys at home. The pink one. My daughter picked it out. She's a big fan." Leo opened his mouth to point out that he was fairly certain Yale did not sell pink jerseys and that he wasn't in high school anymore, but the bartender was still talking.

"But based on my calculations, you're still under twenty-one." Leo looked at Jimbo, incredulous. Jimbo tried. He leaned against the bar.

"Come on, Sarge. Cut the kid some slack? He's had a rough few weeks. Rougher than most." The Staff Sergeant shook his head.

"Orders from up top, sir." He pointed toward the ceiling. Jimbo frowned.

"Up top? For a drink order?"

"High command says no alcohol for Lieutenant Chen. Something about body refining protocols." The bartender shrugged.

"A Lord Ross signed off on it personally." Lord Ross. Leo kept his face neutral, but the name was strangely familiar. He had heard the name last year, when Dr. Reyes mentioned that Lord Ross would handle his Foundation Establishment body refining. Leo hadn't thought much of it at the time. It had been one more name in a long list of people making decisions about his future. But he had never met Lord Ross. Never spoken to him. Never even seen a picture.

And yet this person apparently had enough pull to issue orders through military channels about what Leo could and could not drink at a bar deep in the New York Catacombs. What did Lord Ross want with him? Leo added it to the growing list of things he didn't understand, right below "The Enemy" and right above "Did Yale start selling jerseys in pink?"

"Fine," Leo said.

"I'll have a non-alcoholic spiritual beer." The bartender's expression softened.

"Sir, I wouldn't do that to you. Those taste like someone filtered qi through a dirty sock." He was already reaching for a glass.

"How about a Coke? On the house." Leo sighed.

"Fine."

They settled into a booth near the back. Jimbo had his bourbon. Leo had his Coke, which he was trying very hard not to resent.

"So," Jimbo leaned back in his seat.

"Tell me everything. What happened over there?" Leo had told him that he had a lot to share. And he did. But the thing he most needed to talk about was the one thing he couldn't share. Not yet. Maybe not ever. The Enemy. He didn't know who might be listening. He didn't know who else might have connections to that game world, and until he did, the fewer people who knew, the safer everyone would be. At least that was what he told himself. So instead of his real concern, Leo gave Jimbo the version he could share.

Mateo's cousins. The Grand Formations Summit. Sariya and the Weaver Cult and the near-death experience with a demon. All true. All important. All not the thing that actually still mattered.

"Enough about me," Leo said, after finishing his story.

"What's everyone else been up to? Harry and Vicky and Ellie?" Jimbo took a sip of his bourbon.

"They ended up joining Ellie's older brother's expedition team for now. They've been farming merits in the Catacombs for the past few months."

"Farming merits?"

"Picking up whatever mission looks safe and quick. Making sure they have enough stockpiled so they can afford to reach Gold Core once they turn twenty-five." Jimbo swirled his drink.

"Harry's planning to break off and form his own expedition team after they all form their cores." Leo processed this. He was a little worried about his former teammates risking their lives in the Catacombs. But hopefully they were a little safer working under an established team rather than venturing off on their own early.

"What about Shawn and Darnell?" Jimbo's eyebrows rose.

"You didn't hear?"

"Hear what?"

"They got drafted. Shawn went to the Dallas Cowboys. Darnell went to the Detroit Lions."

"Of course Shawn went to Dallas."

"Division rival with your Giants, man. You know exactly what that means." Jimbo laughed.

"NFC East blood feud." Leo shook his head. The NFC East was going to be interesting this year.

"Let me guess. They can't wait for us to meet and fight."

"Actually, funny thing. They asked me to pass along a message. Something about maybe not destroying their knees when you meet on the field? Their words, not mine."

"Come on, man. A torn ACL takes people out for what, a week? Two weeks tops? Pop some alchemical pills and they're back on the field."

"Hey, look, lots of people are gunning for their spots on the roster. They just want you to make them look good, you know what I mean?"

"I'll try to hit them gently. No promises though."

"That's all they ask." Jimbo finished his bourbon and signaled for another.

"You know, once you're done with school, New York Command could use someone with your skillset. Harry's expedition team is going to need a trump card when they go independent. I'm sure you'll need the merits." Leo felt something tighten in his chest. A month ago, he would have said yes without hesitating.

"Yeah," he said.

"Maybe." You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. The word came out flat, and they both knew it meant no. Jimbo looked at him for a moment, read his face, and let it go. He moved on to ask about Leo's time at the International Formations Institute and how he felt about formation engraving as a career. That was what good friends did. They didn't push. But what was said was said. It sat in the air between them like a third presence at the table.

And Leo couldn't explain to him why things had changed. Leo felt a twist of guilt. He hated keeping things from Jimbo. But the guilt came with a question he couldn't quite shake: had Jimbo invited him here just to catch up, or had someone asked him to? Somehow, even though they were sitting three feet apart, he felt further from his former teammate than he ever had before.

Human Hut Mountain, Azure Profound Continent The group was already waiting for Leo when he logged in at Human Hut Mountain. Arthur, Mike, Kevin, and Shen Tianyi were huddled around a stone bench with cards spread between them. The moment they spotted Leo, Arthur swept the cards into a pile and stood up.

"Poker's over. Kid's here."

"We should finish the hand," Shen Tianyi said.

"I was winning."

"You're always winning," Kevin muttered.

"That's like five hands in a row. Five. Nobody wins five hands in a row."

"Perhaps you simply play poorly." Mike was already walking toward Leo.

"We can fleece Kevin later. Kid looks like hell warmed over." Leo walked toward them, and something in his chest finally unclenched. These were the only people in the world who understood what he was dealing with. No more secrets. No more careful words. He could finally talk. He started from the beginning. The arrival in Ashviel. The Grey Cult's underground city carved into the bedrock of the Catacombs. The Grand Formations Summit and the political maneuvering between the three major cults.

"Wait, wait," Kevin interrupted.

"This Seraphindë woman. Describe her again."

"She's complicated," Leo said.

"Carries a lot of weight on her shoulders. I think she's been through more than most people could handle, and she's still standing. Like she made peace with a life she didn't choose." Kevin leaned in closer and dropped his voice to a whisper.

"Is she some kind of big titty goth mommy?" Leo looked at him with open disgust.

"Kevin, I didn't get to that part of the story yet. But we did have a genuine emotional conversation about love and sacrifice." Kevin's eyes lit up.

"So that's a yes?" Leo pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Should I tell your girlfriend about these comments?" Kevin went very quiet. His mouth opened, then closed. He looked down at his shoes and suddenly became extremely interested in whether or not they were tied.

"Please continue with your story, Leo," Kevin said in a much smaller voice. Leo continued. He told them about his meeting with Sariya, the Slaughter Qi corruption, and the infection spreading through Ashviel. Soon he reached the night when the hotel where the Weaver Cult was attacked.

"The whole city locked down," Leo said.

"Formation barriers went up across every district. Vivian was making her way to the library, so I had to go out to find her and bring her back. After we came back, Mateo received a transmission slip that..."

"Back up, back up." Mike made a rewinding gesture with his finger.

"What's this about you rescuing Vivian?"

"She ended up getting stuck behind a barrier. Since she scraped a knee, to be safe, I carried her back."

"So after you two got back," Mike said slowly, "Did anything happen between you two?"

"I left her on the couch. There was important information on the transmission slip. I needed to see what was happening. She was perfectly fine," Leo added.

"She didn't even need me to carry her. I was probably being overdramatic." Mike closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he just sighed.

"Leo. She has the hots for you." Leo felt his face go warm.

"What? No. Vivian and I are friends. We've worked on formations together for months. We have a good professional relationship."

"Professional," Arthur repeated, the word dripping with disbelief.

"I don't see her that way," Leo insisted.

"She's brilliant and capable and I respect her work a lot, but I don't want to ruin what we have by making things complicated." Arthur leaned forward and jabbed a finger at him.

"Kid. I just heard you tell us you bored that Sariya girl half to death with your karma talk, and now you're telling me you princess-carried your best opportunity and then dumped her on the furniture so you could go read the mail?"

"First of all, I didn't bore Sariya. We had a genuine conversation about karma and fate. Second, she's evil. I haven't gotten to that part yet. Can you let me finish my story?"

"Of course she's evil." Kevin nudged Mike with his elbow.

"Right? Both of us guys in relationships could tell immediately. Clear as day. Classic honeypot behavior." Mike stepped away from the elbow.

"Don't lump me in with you just because you have a CIA agent pretending to be your girlfriend."

"She's not pretending," Kevin said.

"Anyways, the point is, Leo, any girl who approaches you first, there's always an angle. Always. Sariya had an angle. That goth mo... that Seraphindë woman probably has an angle too. In my experience, it's either a honeypot or they're trying to sell you on some altcoin. One time this girl on Instagram..."

"Can we get back to the story?" Leo asked.

"Not until you tell us what you're going to do about Vivian," Mike said.

"Do about her?"

"She likes you, Leo. What are you going to do about it?" Leo threw his hands up.

"I'm eighteen years old! I have my whole life ahead of me! I'm not going to settle down just because I'm legally an adult now!" Mike considered this for a moment. Then he nodded slowly.

"Okay. That's actually a fair point. Continue." Leo took a breath. Finally. He launched into the rest of his account.

"I figured out something while I was under the Nectar's influence," Leo said. His voice dropped lower.

"Sariya's trap medallion and Hollowfang's identity token were made by the same person. The formation signatures match exactly." He paused, letting that sink in.

"Someone has access to both the Catacombs and the Azure Profound Continent. Someone who's been here longer than us. Someone with connections to both the Weaver Cult and the Embroidered Uniform Guard. I've been calling them The Enemy." The courtyard went quiet. Then Arthur shrugged.

"Yeah, that tracks." Leo stared at him.

"What?" He had expected shock. Terror, maybe. Instead they just shrugged.

"We talked about something like this a few months back," Mike said.

"Kevin brought it up, actually. We usually spare you from these team meetings where Kevin goes off about whatever new thing is keeping him up at night." Kevin jumped in.

"Okay, so, think about it. The Otherworldly Demon Summoning Technique has been around for thousands of years, right? Thousands. So what are the odds that we're the first people who ever got pulled through? Like, come on. Zero. The odds are zero."

"I had money on it being someone like Monarch Buffet," Arthur said.

"Warren must have some kind of angle. You don't build a portfolio like that without inside information. Investing is a lot harder than it looks. I've lost my life savings in the stock market twice."

"Twice?" Mike said.

"First time was a learning experience. Second time was realizing I actually learned nothing."

"But yeah," Kevin gestured with his hands, "if Wei Tuo had access to the summoning technique, then obviously other people did too. Like, obviously. I've been saying this for months."

"You thought about this already?" Leo's voice came out higher than he intended.

"I've been tearing my hair out trying to figure out what to do, and you are telling me you guys already knew?" Kevin shrugged.

"I mean, it just makes sense if you think about it for like two seconds." Leo got even more annoyed.

"Okay, but the problem is I think The Enemy was specifically targeting me. And then you guys. We came this close to dying." He held up his thumb and forefinger, pinching them together with barely a sliver of space between them.

"This close." Mike walked over and put his hand on Leo's shoulder.

"It's okay, Leo. We have a surefire way of avoiding corruption." Leo looked at him.

"You do?" Mike's expression was completely serious.

"Just don't go down into the Catacombs." He put both hands on either side of his head and made an explosion gesture.

"Problem solved." Leo glared at him.

"What about if The Enemy comes hunting for us here? In the Azure Profound Continent? What do we do then?" Arthur waved a hand.

"You know that feeling you got that says 'don't use your special vision'? Simple. Just don't use your special vision. Kids these days. Tell them not to do something and suddenly they want to do it more. You know what my generation did when someone said don't touch the wire? We didn't touch the wire." Leo's frustration mounted.

"What about our summoning plates? What if The Enemy finds our location and destroys them? The cranes guarding this place are only Nascent Soul level. The Enemy has to be at least Deity Transformation strength. They could wipe out Human Hut Mountain without breaking a sweat, and we'd be locked out of the game forever." Arthur and Mike both turned to look at Kevin. Kevin straightened his posture.

"I have a contingency plan."

"Of course you do," Arthur muttered.

"I'm not paranoid. I'm prepared. There's a difference." Kevin rummaged around in his storage ring and pulled out a map.

"Okay, so, three months ago I found this spot where the Great Barrier Mountain Range intersects with the Savage Mountains." He unfolded the map and jabbed his finger at a circled point.

"Middle of nowhere. Like, actual nowhere. No spiritual qi veins, no herbs, no strategic value. Just rocks and wind and nothing. Nobody goes there because there's literally zero reason to go there." He turned the map around so everyone could see.

"I already set up a backup base. It's basically a cave with some formations so we can respawn there." Kevin traced a line along the mountain range.

"The only people who actually need to respawn a lot are Leo and Vivian, since you guys do the divine sense training. Everyone else can keep living here at Human Hut Mountain."

"And if we move our summoning plates to the backup spot," Kevin said, talking faster now, "and we limit how often we visit, then basically nobody can find them. The area has so little spiritual qi that any cultivator scanning would just see background noise. Plus we set up detection formations around the perimeter. If anything bigger than a spirit beast comes near it, we know right away." Leo opened his mouth to object. Then he closed it. He tried to think of a flaw in Kevin's reasoning.

"That's actually reasonable."

"I know." Kevin puffed up a little.

"I've been planning for stuff like this since week three we started playing. I have seventeen contingency plans for all the possible existential threats we could face. This is Plan four. Plans one through three are for if the threat comes from inside our group."

"Why would the threat come from inside our group?" Mike asked. Kevin started nudging his head in Arthur's direction and coughing.

"Hey," Arthur said.

"I see that."

"I'm not doing anything," Kevin said.

"I have allergies." Mike held up his hands.

"Alright. Moving on." He gave Leo a pat on the back.

"Don't sweat the stuff you can't control. Focus on getting stronger. That's the only thing that actually matters right now. Everything else will sort itself out."

"And besides," Arthur added, "if this Enemy character turns out to be too much trouble, we'll figure out how to build some kind of atomic qi bomb. Blow the whole problem sky high. Lots of former Manhattan Project engineers at the retirement home." Shen Tianyi, who had been silent throughout the entire conversation, finally spoke.

"The contamination from such a weapon would render entire cities uninhabitable for generations. The karmic weight alone would guarantee catastrophic heavenly tribulations for everyone involved in its creation. The Heavenly Dao does not permit such violations of the natural order without consequence." Arthur waved his hand.

"Details." Leo found himself laughing despite everything.

"Maybe I'll go to college after all and learn how to make nukes," he said.

"Add nuclear physics to my formation studies. Become well-rounded."

"Now you're talking." Arthur pointed at him approvingly.

"Diversify your skill set. Corner the market before anyone else catches on. That's how you build an empire, kid." Leo looked around at the group. He hadn't expected the conversation to go like this. He'd imagined concern. Urgency. Maybe even fear. Instead he got practical solutions, bad jokes, and a paranoia-induced contingency plan. It was oddly reassuring.

"Vivian will be back online in a few hours," Kevin said. Then he raised and lowered his eyebrows.

"You know, maybe you could, like, smooth things over. Be nice to her. Like, on purpose."

"And maybe," Arthur added, giving Leo a meaningful look, "don't drop her on any furniture this time. Show some class, kid." Even Shen Tianyi joined in on the ribbing.

"Even an outer disciple knows to nurture the things he wishes to grow. You have treated this connection like a weed." Leo threw his hands up.

"Great. Even the guy who speaks in fortune cookie wisdom is roasting me now." Mike shook his head with a grin.

"Welcome to the other side, Leo. This is what it feels like when everyone picks on you instead of Kevin." Kevin nodded solemnly.

"It's actually really nice to not be the target for once." Leo sighed and sat down on the nearest stone bench.

"I'm never going to live this down, am I?"

"Not a chance, kid," Arthur said.

"Not a chance."