Chương 26: Partners’ Meeting

At level 4 and with my goblin experience, everything in the E gate felt slowed down, like I had extra time to think and could see more of the battlefield in front of me. One outing of hunting wild goblins didn't make me an expert by any stretch, but they weren't as scary now. The nervousness I felt in my first goblin run was gone, so I could put the entirety of my focus on being an effective crawler. The boss was a goblin berserker. I asked if I could join for the fight, but the captain told me no.

A petty part of me believed that was because he wanted the XP for himself. He was probably too high-level for a single berserker to matter all that much, though. Once my ATV was back on the trailer, I checked my system profile: Dorion Carmino Class: Archer Level: 4 XP Progress: 182/800 Str: 6 Dex: 10 Con: 6 Int: 3 Cha: 3 Abilities: Piercing Shot Traits: Ranged Accuracy Improved Reload Sharpen Spells: (none) 63 XP. It wasn't nothing, but man, did I prefer the return I got on that one D gate.

With the way the voluntary cull program operated, I had no way to push or lobby for getting better gates. Volunteers got what they got. End of story. My next day of work, I didn't see Megan whatsoever. That wasn't unusual for interns, but with Nathan's "talk" coming that evening, I found myself reading into that. I had officially cross-referenced two years of crasher records by that point.

A few here and there were reported missing and never found, but that didn't seem like enough to corroborate a rumor about crasher kills. Then again, I had no baseline to compare it to, I was not versed in probability and statistics, and I was still three years' worth of records away from the present day. All of that is the long way of saying I didn't know shit.

I got home a little later than usual because I both wanted to know what Nathan was going to say while also wanting to put it off for as long as possible, so I kept at the records longer than I really needed to. Nathan and Megan were already in the living room.

"Hey, man," Nathan said.

"How was work?"

"Nothing exciting."

"Did you try Beth's mac salad?"

"I did. It was really good."

"Right? I think I ate half a gallon of mayonnaise. I had so much." I sat.

"What do we need to talk about?" Taking a deep breath, Nathan looked at Megan. She nodded.

"We know you're going out and hunting wild monsters," Nathan said.

"We?"

"It wasn't intentional. You know how the walls are in this place. We were in my room and heard you and Beth talking about it."

"Both of you?" I asked. Megan blushed.

"Yeah, man," Nathan answered.

"I know we weren't supposed to know, and I feel really bad about getting in your business like that. Even if it was an accident."

"I know you wouldn't eavesdrop on purpose," I said.

"Still. It feels shitty."

"That's where the weirdness is coming from, though? You disagree with me hunting?" Nathan shook his head.

"Dude, no. Hang on." He stood, went to his room, and returned a moment later with a shopping bag. He handed it to me. I pulled a box out of the bag.

"What's this?"

"It's a GoPro."

"I can read the box, asshole." Nathan grinned.

"I mean, why are you giving me this?"

"We thought it might help with the training to have a way to review a run. If you want to become an influencer, there's that too, but I know that isn't something you want. I do know how you are with tests and assignments, though. If you got something wrong, you always went back to figure out why."

"You're saying 'we' again," I observed.

"Megan helped me pick it out, and, well…" He turned to Megan.

"Do you want to tell him?" She nodded nervously.

"I want to go with you," she said.

"On wild monster hunts?"

"Yeah. I know that's asking a lot, but I think the practice would be good for me too, and us working together is safer than either of us working alone." I didn't know what to say. I had prepared for half a dozen possible conversations, but this wasn't one of them.

"Sorry," she added.

"That wasn't fair of me to ask." Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"I'm not offended," I replied.

"I'm just surprised. Most people would say it's a waste of time."

"You said before it was to help you get a better job later. What are you aiming for? If I can help there too, I want to."

"Oh. There's no specific job. I just have a hunch that being well-rounded would help me." Megan frowned at me.

"You're a terrible liar."

"No, I'm not." Nathan laughed.

"Bro. You're so bad at it. You get real nervous and real still at the same time."

"You know something I don't," Megan said.

"I also work where you do and know that we don't get to talk about some of the things we learn. What I really care about is that you figured out something appealing enough that you would go hunt wild goblins alone."

"Uhh…"

"It's okay. You don't need to confirm it. Everyone else is following the same old path and hoping for different results, but you aren't. I don't need to know why, but I want better career opportunities for myself too. If there's a chance wild hunts will help me later, I want the experience."

"I still wouldn't be able to say anything, if there was anything to say."

"I understand," she answered.

"I won't ask either."

"You're going to risk your life without knowing the full picture? Really?" Megan shrugged.

"If anything, hunting wild monsters will prepare me for a dungeon surge if we ever have to deal with one. It seems like a whole different kind of challenge to me."

"It is. It's weird to go from a crawl to a hunt. Umm… I'm not opposed to bringing you along, but I've only gone once. I'm not an expert."

"We can learn together."

"Before you commit, you should be aware that I have no way of knowing what kinds of monsters we'll encounter. I can say where monsters are expected to be. That's it. That means we won't know the quantity of monsters either."

"How are you finding these hunting spots?" Megan asked. Nathan put a hand on her knee.

"Maybe we don't ask Dor to spill all his secrets." She nodded.

"You're right." To me, she said, "I understand the risks. If you'll have me, I'd still like to join you."

"Then I guess we're officially a party now." I knocked on the door to Enforcer Chapman's office.

"Intern Gray, hello." How did everyone get the idea to call me Gray instead of Carmino? Was there a literal memo?

"Close the door," she said. I obliged.

"Well? Does the data say anything interesting about crashers going missing?" I had recently finished the project and emailed Chapman to let her know. She asked me to see her in person.

"I'm not an expert, so I don't know what's normal and what's a standard deviation or whatever that's called."

"I know," she said.

"Right," I replied.

"There does seem to be an uptick in missing crashers over the last six months."

"How big of an uptick?" she asked.

"One or two a year to five." Chapman took off her glasses. She set them down as she leaned back in her chair and rubbed her eyes. I didn't know what to do, so I stood awkwardly in front of her desk waiting for her to tell me.

"This is going to be a shit show," she groaned.

"We're not cops, and we don't have the budget to become cops either."

"I don't know if I'm allowed to ask, but wouldn't we have seen some sign of this during the enforcement blitz?"

"All but one of the crashers we observed got in and out before crawlers got there. In that one instance, the crawlers wanted the refund on the gate and never went farther than stepping inside. A week is too small of a sample size."

"That makes sense," I said.

"What would you like me to do next?" Chapman sat back up and put her glasses on.

"I'll send you another batch of records. Follow the same process. That will be all."

"Yes, ma'am." By the time I returned to my desk, I had a new email from Enforcer Chapman. She wanted me to go back an additional five years. Part of me thought the next step would be reviewing missing persons' cases in general to see if we could identify any crashers who didn't already have a record, but we were enforcers, not investigators. Even if wading through years of paperwork felt like an investigation, I was an intern.

Later that day, Lofold, one of the other interns, struck up a conversation with Saito and Wilson.

"You guys heard this rumor that crawlers are killing crashers?" Lofold asked.

"No," Saito answered.

"Where did you hear that?"

"A friend." Wilson didn't take her eyes off her screen.

"We don't know how reliable your friends are."

"They're CDM." Saito perked up.

"Crawlers killing crashers, huh? Someone would have had to rat for that to get out of a dungeon." Lofold shrugged.

"Or bragged," Wilson added.

"Crawlers do like to brag, don't they?" Saito put his hands behind his head.

"Yeah, someone shooting their mouth off sounds more likely than a betrayal." Lofold asked, "You'd have to have a ton of boots on the ground to catch someone in the act, right? I don't see what the CDM can do about it without doubling our staff. You'd basically have to witness it happen to catch them."

"Drone tech is always improving," Wilson offered. Neither Saito nor Lofold seemed impressed by that explanation.

"Could develop an informant or send undercovers into all the guilds," Saito proposed.

"That still leaves you with no evidence, though."

"Murder isn't supposed to be that easy," Lofold said. Saito agreed.

"Yeah, that's scary shit. Dungeons are already mostly lawless, but the majority of crawlers play along with being upstanding citizens. If they figure out there are no repercussions for killing crashers? Yikes."

"On top of the camper slayings," Wilson said. Lofold nodded.

"Might get awfully busy around here soon." The trio went a long stretch without speaking. Processing records wasn't difficult, but it was complex enough that holding a conversation while working was hard, so I didn't do anything but listen. As if the conversation had never stopped, Saito said, "You'd have to honeypot it. I think that's the only way to catch anyone killing crashers."

"Honeypot?" Lofold asked.

"Bait, essentially. An undercover team crashes gates intentionally to see if crawlers attack them." Lofold whistled.

"Fuck everything about that. If I got thrown on that team, I'd quit right there. Not a chance am I risking a fight with a killer crawler." He probably shouldn't say that out loud, I thought to myself. I also agreed with him, for the record. Even if levels were equal, crawlers would be better equipped and better trained than anyone from the government. If a killer crawler attacked and the target revealed themselves as CDM, wouldn't they have a bigger incentive to finish what they started?

Otherwise, they're getting jail time and probably losing their license. Wiping the CDM honeypot party would be much less trouble. Saito said, "After seeing what one crawler did to Gray, I'd like it if they gave us better training in general. Sorry to rub salt in that wound, Gray."

"It's fine," I replied.

"Buddy of mine did the police academy," Saito continued.

"They only spent like four weeks on hand-to-hand self-defense. Army bootcamp is only ten weeks long in total. Marines do twelve."

"What are you saying?" Lofold asked.

"I say I wish they gave us better training, but I also know our government. If we ever got something, it wouldn't be enough to matter much." Lofold nodded.

"You're not wrong, my guy."

"That's also why I think they won't actually do a honeypot," Saito added.

"I don't know what they would do instead, but I got to figure most anyone in the CDM would reach the same conclusion we did. If they send in undercover crashers, they'll get killed. That's a lot of human resources budget to replace all of those people."