Chương 154: CDM 3, Chapter 30: Manual Labor

The rain let up, but the Pampas Plains were still a swampy mess. Our drivers were accustomed to the challenge, however. They knew where the small variations in elevation were, nearly invisible routes that shed water instead of pooling it and dried just a little bit faster than the ground a few feet to either side. Our second training trip across the plains wasn't as productive as the first.

We had two days where we ran one gate instead of two because of the distance we had to cover between runs, but otherwise, the training went smoothly. Eight crawls later, we were all level 13, and I was absolutely in love with my Steady Hands ability. I still caught myself forgetting I had it from time to time, but the option to run and loose at the same time was a game-changer.

For her new levels, Megan added two new cleric abilities to round out her multiclass: Prayers of Cleansing Class: Cleric Type: Spell Learn the prayers Soft, Cure Poison, and Cure Dark. Strength of prayers is based on your wisdom and your overall level. Devotion Class: Cleric Type: Trait The effectiveness of all prayers is improved by 5%. Those additions completed the cleric side of her Battle Medic build. From there, the rest of her levels would be in brawler, boosting her durability and damage potential.

Hornby and Giago, despite being on two different spellblade paths, took identical unlocks for levels 12 and 13: Improved Casting Class: Black Mage/White Mage Type: Trait The effectiveness of your spells is improved by 5% while mana costs for all spells are reduced by 10%. Combat Casting Class: Black Mage/White Mage Type: Trait Improve your concentration in combat to reduce the chances of your spell being interrupted. Total bonus is based on your level and your intelligence.

With leveling beyond 15 likely to be incredibly slow, multiclass mages typically prioritized the effectiveness and utility of their first school of spells. A pure mage had the unlock runway to add more breadth to their spell repertoire. If Hornby and Giago were born with a mage class, they would have had 15 levels of mage-specific unlocks to work with. For the immediate future, they had 3 levels to get as much use out of their multiclass as possible.

With XP requirements of 409, 600 and 819, 200 to move to level 14 and level 15, respectively, they weren't likely to see those unlock options for quite some time. That was true for all of us, really. The distance between levels 13 and 14 was the same as the distance from level 1 to 13. CDM culls were going to be our only source of XP, so we would have to cover that ground with trash E and D gates.

McDouglas promised to "level the shit" out of me to get me to 15 and eventually to 20, but I didn't know if that included my party or if I would be doing that alone. Regardless, I was stoked to be at level 13. For my unlocks, I had the following options: Splintering Arrow Class: Archer Type: Ability Cooldown: 1 Minute Duration: Instant Prerequisites: Multi-Shot If your next arrow hits an enemy, up to three exposed enemies within 5 feet of the target are struck by fragments of the arrow.

Each fragment deals 33% of the original arrow's damage. Acrobatics Class: Archer Type: Trait Gain an intuitive understanding of dynamic forms of locomotion, improving your ability to jump, vault, climb, and roll. Total improvement from Acrobatics is based on your dexterity. Improved Sharpen Class: Archer Type: Trait Cooldown: None Duration: Perpetual The chance of your arrow ignoring armor is increased by an additional 5%.

As strange as it might be to hear, I dreaded getting to this particular batch of unlocks because all of them were exceptional under the right circumstances. Splintering Arrow used my Dual Nocking-Multi-Shot-Piercing-Vengeful Arrow combo to turn me into a crowd control machine. If a mob of goblins charged at me, my 6 arrows would hit 3 goblins and then use Piercing to continue traveling, hitting another 3. Then each of those arrows had the potential to break into 3 smaller arrows.

Since I had fired into a group in this hypothetical, those arrows were likely to be surrounded by potential targets. In an ultra-ideal scenario, I could down 24 enemies with one loose of my bow. That was less useful for boss fights or tough, solo mobs. Splintering Arrow wouldn't help for shit against a troll or a helminth horror, but another boost to Sharpen would. That would give my arrows a 10% total chance of ignoring armor, and my dexer build gave me several shots on goal for that to pay off.

A 1 out of 10 chance was pretty good in its own right, and it was even better with the volume of arrows I could manage. That wasn't useless against large groups of enemies, but it wasn't as useful as Splintering Arrow. Acrobatics, meanwhile, had universal potential. My Steady Hands ability meant that I could, in theory, backflip and loose arrows at the same time without compromising accuracy.

Archers who took Acrobatics without Steady Hands used it to reach better vantage points and angles, quickly climbing to gain a positional advantage before they paused to aim, which was useful for me, too. I could picture it being especially handy in urban hunting scenarios where I had multiple floors and rooftops to work with. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. But what was best for me and my future?

I could still follow build guides, but I wasn't a generic crawler anymore. Hunting wild monsters wasn't a factor for crawlers, so build guides didn't account for those realities. That was up to me to figure out. I got these unlock options on the second-to-last day of our leveling trip, and I sat around a fire with Megan, Hornby, and Giago while I debated the best choice.

After succeeding in making myself less, rather than more, certain about the best path, I read the three options to the others and asked for their input.

"I'd throw Improved Sharpen in the shitter from the get," Hornby said.

"With how much you shoot, 1/10 isn't that exciting when your chances are already 1/20, and your ammo is unlimited. I'm biased, though. I hate shit that might or might not work, you know?" Hornby had a point, but I disagreed that 1/10 wasn't significantly different from 1/20. I had already been frustrated by the success rate of Sharpen, though. Having that frustration continue for a second unlock would wear on me.

"I'm with Hornby," Megan said, sipping from a tin teacup.

"When I start thinking about big-ass goblin nests, Splintering Arrow sounds like a really nice thing to have." Giago nodded.

"Some parkour bullshit would give you better angles, but a voidwood bow does that for you in a way already." That was true. My equipment provided me with a litany of creative options to target an enemy. Getting to the high ground more quickly would still be useful, especially in combination with voidwood, but it enhanced an existing advantage instead of giving me a new one. Giago continued, saying, "I picture a bunch of goblins hiding out behind cover. Suddenly, arrows appear and explode.

They'd never expect it, and they would lose their shit. The ones who lived would probably leave cover in a panic at that point."

"Your dex is already gross," Hornby added.

"You could probably learn the gymnast stuff the slow way if you wanted. I can think of all sorts of scenarios where Splintering Arrow would have made my life a whole lot fuckin' easier."

"That sounds like a story or two," Megan poked.

"Nothing wild," Hornby replied.

"Command would have reasons for not wanting to hit a compound with an airstrike, RPGs, or grenades. If you flatten the place and kill everyone, you won't recover any intel. Got a bunch of hostiles holed up in a neighborhood full of IEDs? Hell yeah, voidwood the fuck out of them while the rest of the unit sits back and watches. I wish that had been an option for us."

"Man, fuck IEDs," Giago grumbled.

"Keeping an eye out for the surprise bomb is a pain in the ass when you're trying to do a quick breach, or you're under fire." Hornby nodded.

"We were in Zinder trying to track down this terrorist cell. They had two mages, a dozen guys with guns, and a few of them were really fucking good at making bombs. They had 47 bodies to their names from ambushes, and it was like Giago said. Truck rolls over an IED, then the bad guys pop out to spray you with spells and bullets while you're confused as hell. Running for cover walks you right into another IED."

"Jesus," Megan whispered.

"Yeah. Buncha bastards. In Zinder, a street block is really just a mass of houses built on top of one another, so you end up with this awful fucking maze where they randomly connect. We had them holed up in one of those kinds of places, and the brass wouldn't authorize an airstrike because something useful could be inside." Giago shook his head.

"And you couldn't take your time because the longer you wait, the more time they have to destroy the good stuff."

"Yep. It was a fucking mess. Tripwire grenades all over, kids with AKs hiding in dark corners, and you knew two mages were around somewhere. That messes with your head even more. Our squad had one KIA, and the raid as a whole had 7. Guess what we found?"

"Fucking nothing," Giago answered.

"Fucking nothing."

"I'm sorry for bringing something like that up," Megan said.

"I should have known better."

"Don't sweat it. Everyone loves a good war story." Megan crossed her arms and looked in my direction.

"Goblins and bugbears use traps. Breaching any kind of nest is always stressful as hell, and it sounds a lot like what Hornby described." That sold me. I selected Splintering Arrow and put 2 points into intelligence and one into constitution.

I reviewed my system profile: Class: Archer Level: 13 XP Progress: 88609 / 409, 600 Str: 10 Dex: 19 Con: 14 Int: 9 Cha: 3 Abilities: Piercing Shot Dual Nocking Multi-Shot Vengeful Arrow Splintering Arrow Traits: Ranged Accuracy Improved Reload Sharpen Momentum Swift Hands Bloody Hands Battle Hardened Improved Recovery Steady Hands Spells: (none)"I appreciate the input, guys," I said when I was done.

"Having a party's perspective helps a lot."

"You're ruining us for running with anyone else," Giago joked.

"'What do you mean you can't shoot through walls? My last archer could shoot through walls, and he was faster too.'" We laughed. Hornby raised his cup.

"In a few days, we'll be Stateside again. Here's to fucking up a bunch of monsters that think they can get away with killing Americans." We clinked our tin cups. Nathan and I got back to the guild house a little after 2 a. m. The building smelled like sawdust.

"Pretty rude of Lil' D to not come to the door and greet me," he grumbled.

"That's the longest he's ever been without me, and he's still going to play this all nonchalantly?" Nathan flipped on all of the lights he could from the front door. I had grown accustomed to the first floor being permanently dim, but now it blazed a bright white, our dinky single lightbulb fixtures replaced with long fluorescent lights. No drywall had been hung, but the build had been framed out. According to the drawings I saw, the immediate front area was a sort of lobby/conference room for the Dungeon Divas.

Then a hallway ran between four offices, emptying into what would be the armory. The whole building needed HVAC yet, and for everything but the armory, a few sheets of drywall, flooring, and finishing touches like paint and trim would turn the skeleton into something usable. That sounded like a lot of work to me, but Nathan said getting the drywall hung and plastered was the worst part. Compared to everything else we had to have done, what we had left would be easy. So he said, at least.

The armory, however, would be unlike any other space in the entire building. Our collection of weapons and tools steadily grew, and a burglar would cream their pants if they got to smash a window and walk away with an enchanted voidwood bow and a few thousand dollars of drone tech. Frank wrote down the basics for what he did to secure the armory in his shop because Beth asked, and Nathan intended to put all of those recommendations to use. The gist of it was building an iron cage around the room.

We wouldn't end up with the level of security of a bank vault, but no one would be able to kick in the door or cut through the wall to get inside. When it was finished, it would be about the size of the armory on Resmith's yacht, giving us plenty of room for gear maintenance and loadout planning.

"Few new lights really help, huh?" Nathan mused, looking around at the work that had been done on the first floor while we were away.

"It won't feel this bright once we get actual light fixtures in. We're rawdogging everything right now." Nathan dropped his stuff and picked up Lil' Dorion from the couch.

"Want to see how it looks upstairs?" he asked.

"Sure." Four apartments, a kitchen, and a living room were framed out, piped, and wired. The spiral staircase leading up from the second floor to the third-floor common area was still missing, but the vision Nathan had for this place was much easier for me to see now.

"You're going to love hanging drywall," Nathan said, inspecting the work.

"Yeah?" He laughed.

"Drywall fucking sucks, dude. It won't be as bad since we have a few stat points in strength, but moving the shit around is only half of what makes it a pain in the ass. You're going to hate trying to mud and smooth the seams."

"As long as you're okay with me not knowing what I'm doing, I'll manage."

"Remember you said that."

"Why?"

"Because you're going to question our friendship after a few sheets."

"It's that bad?" I asked. He nodded.

"I fucking hate drywall."