Chương 174: CDM 3, Chapter 50: Corporate Partnerships

The Center for Dungeon Management is working around the clock to design, test, and deploy reliable Stage 2 gate measurements to the field. This is our top priority, but the scope of the problem and the scale of the rollout present several production and logistical challenges. We are facing a number of factors, such as component availability and manufacturing bottlenecks, that are not easily resolved. However, we also recognize that we need immediate solutions to protect the lives of crawlers and civilians.

To that end, we are partnering with Crawl Cams to roll out a temporary solution for preventing dungeon surges. Parties with the support of official teams or guilds are expected to check in regularly with their handlers. Teams and guilds are responsible for alerting their local CDM office to report potential issues. If a party does not report in as expected or a gate is 24 hours away from surging without its ranking being confirmed, the CDM must be notified.

Failing to do so will result in fines and other disciplinary action. Independent teams running E and D gates are now required to deploy modified repeaters (provided by Crawl Cams) when they enter gates, and the party leader is required to wear a modified vitals-tracking bracelet. If a gate is found to be anomalous, the party leader can activate the bracelet to alert the CDM.

If a party leader is unable to activate the bracelet, an automated alert will be sent through the repeater if the party leader's vital signs drop to zero. We are rushing the production of these devices and expect them to be available within 48 to 72 hours at your local CDM office. If you have any questions, please contact the CDM crawler support line. Enforcers received a copy of this announcement one hour before it went public.

I expected there to be some pushback about independent crawlers being treated like canaries in coal mines, but as far as quick fixes went, this seemed like a pretty good one. Aside from not being able to assess the rank of a gate, not knowing what happened to a crawl team after they entered a dungeon was one of the major sources of danger and loss of life in Stage 2 gates. We saw a similar danger with gas in enclosed spaces. One person goes in and passes out. A second person sees and rushes in to help.

They too pass out. If someone knowledgeable about that kind of hazard isn't around, several people can die before well-meaning bystanders stop rushing in. The repeater solution would, in theory, stop that chain reaction before it began. Instead of a second crawl team going in to see what happened to the first, they would know that the party leader was dead or, in the best-case scenario, receive an alert from the party leader announcing that the gate was Stage 2.

If my party had that option when we entered the ogre gate, we might not have had to risk our lives trying to clear the rest of the dungeon. We could have hit the button and waited for help. In the case of the shadow hunters in the mines, we wouldn't have had to sit in the dark for 3 hours, hoping that someone on the outside would realize something went wrong and we needed rescued. I was on my way down to pick up Intern Ali for another day of harvest inspections when Beth texted the group chat.

"The wraith hunt video is crushing it!" That video had just gone live that morning. We worried that releasing it right after the moon landing would affect visibility, but Nad-Nade was anxious for us to get more content out. Frankly, I didn't want to wait either. I was quite obviously biased, but I thought it was our best video yet. We had a good mix of investigative storytelling to set up the history behind the Molly Stark Sanatorium.

We had a tense and creepy crawl as we went in after the wraiths, and then we had a big action-packed plot twist when the wisps emerged from the underground tunnels and chased us back to the ice cream truck. By the way, Megan blurred the sides of the truck in an attempt to disguise such a recognizable vehicle, but I wasn't sure how much that would really help.

TheUnderDome photoshoot had already triggered a deluge of body comparisons between the Divas shown hunting monsters, the Divas who were shown by the pool on Resmith's yacht, and the Divas shown posing with TheUnderDome. In my mind, the secret that the Divas weren't all hot chicks was already out, so whatever.

"Good morning, Enforcer Gray!" Ali said, jumping to his feet so quickly that the loose fabric on his stump flapped.

"Good morning, Intern Ali. Let's go write some tickets." He smiled and threw his kit over his shoulder, which now included the sword and back sheath I bought him the last time we did inspections together.

"Did you watch the moon landing last night?" he asked as we got into a CDM SUV.

"I did. You?"

"Yeah. It was so surreal. I've never really felt like I 'belonged' to the human race, if that makes sense, but watching that made me proud to be a human. Does that sound weird?" I shook my head.

"I felt the same. For a few moments, all of Earth's problems felt small."

"Did you read or see anything about how precise the whole thing had to be? If they made a mistake, they could have ended up drifting in space until they starved to death or ran out of oxygen. That's terrifying."

"Would be a terrible way to go."

"Think they'll find anything useful on the moon? They took a ton of samples while they were there. Maybe there's some kind of metal or fuel up there that changes everything." Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"That's a good question. I don't know."

"What if they found aliens?" I laughed.

"I could do without meeting aliens for a while, I think."

"My uncle always said dungeon gates were aliens invading Earth."

"Yeah. I heard that too." My phone rang. I could feel Ali watching my face as I listened to the dispatcher on the other side. I ended the call and dropped my phone in the cupholder.

"How bad?" Ali asked.

"Wipe at an E gate. A culling team is already en route. They should be close to wrapping up by the time we get there."

"Stage 2?" I shrugged.

"Sounds like it. A goblin gate ended up having hell hounds and lava elementals."

"Jesus."

"Two survivors at least. They were able to get out."

"How many dead?"

"Four." Ali sighed.

"Are we on cleanup duty?"

"Yep."

"Heck of a way to start a workday." Nodding, I said, "Yeah. I'm not looking forward to it either." Crawlers killed by fire-type monsters left behind a different type of gore from, say, a werewolf or bugbear. A hellhound had fearsome teeth that could tear flesh and limb to pieces, but they were also scorching hot, so mixed into the sprays of blood were burnt pieces of person and strangely cauterized wounds.

Lava elementals often threw molten pieces of themselves at invading crawlers, so any of the people they killed looked like extreme burn victims with armor melted to their stiff and smoldering bodies. The whole dungeon smelled like burnt bologna and stale blood. Since the agency was spread thin as it was, Ali and I didn't have the usual number of hands for a crawler cleanup. Instead of five or six people collecting parts into body bags, it was just the two of us.

When I realized that meant only three hands in total, a deluge of guilt flooded me. It seemed cruel to make Ali pick up body parts after what he had been through, but this was the job, and he chose to stay on instead of retiring. I kept an eye on him, though. Reading facial expressions through all of the PPE wasn't easy, but body language was still plain enough.

If I saw his hands shaking or he paused with the hunch in his back of someone trying not to puke, I told him to go outside and check my phone for messages from the CDM. Ali was a smart kid, so he likely knew I coddled him a bit, but he didn't complain about it, and I had no plans to raise the topic now or at any time in the future. What would it feel like to lose your arm and then have to use your one good hand to pick up the severed arm of another dungeon victim?

I couldn't fathom it, and that felt like an emotion that no one should ever have to experience. But Ali did. We were nearly finished when the cull team returned to the exit of the dungeon. Just like we didn't have the manpower to staff a proper recovery effort, the CDM also didn't have a qualified CDM cull team on hand to officially close this gate. Instead, a nearby Buttymen team took the call in exchange for credits on future gate bids. If I remembered them correctly, they usually ran B and C gates.

"Gate's closing in an hour," a black mage wearing fatigues and carrying a staff said.

"What was the boss?"

"Alpha hellhound." Those monsters were akin to dire wolves that had oversized hellhound bodies. Dire wolves were fast, strong, aggressive, and highly resistant to both physical and magical damage. The hellhound version of that breathed fire and burned you if you got too close with a low constitution score.

"Thank you for the assist," I said.

"Hard to believe indies are still running gates," the mage said, looking forlornly at the bodybags.

"Those guys didn't stand a chance. What an awful way to go." I didn't know what to say, so I only nodded.

"My dad was an indie crawler," the mage continued.

"That's a really hard way to make a living. Even before Stage 2, it didn't really seem worth it to me." His eyes lingered on the bags, perhaps imagining that his father could have been in one of them if Stage 2 had hit a decade earlier.

"Well, see you at the next one, I guess," he said before stepping through the gate. I couldn't decide if that turn of phrase was deliberate or not. Did he mean that to be a casual, canned farewell, or did he mean to suggest that we would see more of these wipes in the future? Because there would definitely be more. Once all of the crawler parts were with the coroner, we stripped out of our PPE and resumed our inspection schedule.

The usually talkative Ali watched Pittsburgh roll past with his head leaning against the glass. A familiar face stared back at me from a roadside billboard.

"He crawls for us all! Vote George Baker for Governor."

"I hope he wins," Ali said, breaking the silence.

"Really?"

"He gets it. He understands how dangerous and important crawling work is. If Stage 2 is trying to end the world, I'd want a crawler who knows dungeons making the tough calls, not some nobody civilian who has never experienced it, you know?"

"How do you feel about the charges he faced a little while ago?"

"Trumped up and overblown," Ali replied.

"If he did kill crashers, it's only because he didn't have a choice. Gates are dangerous enough without strangers ambushing you."

"What are your thoughts on him as a person?"

"Seems really chill. I follow him on Insta. He's replied to my comments three times and regrammed me once. Takes a certain kind of person to connect with fans. That's a lot of time and effort most people wouldn't take." I had more questions, but I decided against asking them. When I thought about it, I realized I didn't really want to hear the answers.

I never expected to personally have my life threatened or to encounter a murderer in person, so I was even less prepared to have someone who did both of those things looking down on me from a billboard. His big smile and perfectly white teeth so obviously dripped with evil in my mind, but it had already been made clear to me that most people didn't see it. They saw a friendly local celebrity, the kind of guy they could have a beer with.

The guy who killed a friend of mine and pointed a sword at me could soon become the Governor of Pennsylvania, and kids like Ali would cast the votes that made it happen.