Chương 72: CDM 2, Chapter 8: Property Inspection

"Thought you should know the EPA paid me a visit today," Domonkos said to me over the phone. I stepped into the kitchen in an attempt to not disturb everyone watching television in the living room.

"Is that good or bad?" Domonkos chuckled.

"Bad for them since they actually gotta do their jobs for once. Can't say they were pleased we played with so much arsenic, but they dropped that real quick when I reminded them they refused to help."

"I was worried we would get in trouble for that." The old man on the other side of the phone laughed.

"Yinz don't have to think about that. I didn't tell 'em anything about you and don't plan to. They're thinking those skulls were hobos, by the way. I guess if that's the case, them dying is less of a worry than taxpayers dying. Heartless bastards. All of them."

"Did they find anything deeper in the caves?"

"Oh yeah, that's why I called in the first place. I brought a lawn chair out to the cave to watch them work because I got nothing else to do with myself, and there was this switch. They were all real bored and ornery about being this far out in the sticks, but then they got real, real serious. Couple hours later, a helicopter came in. Buncha crawlers slid down ropes because the thing couldn't land anywhere. They had all kinda gear and ran right into the caves."

"Interesting."

"Any idea what that's about?" Domonkos asked.

"How different was their gear from the rest of the EPA people?"

"Like a SWAT team dropped in on a bunch of mall cops." I laughed out loud at that description.

"We left a lot of the caves untouched. Maybe they found more goblins?"

"Or something worse than goblins."

"That's a good point. I don't know what that would be, but if you find out, I'd love to hear."

"Oh, I'll find out," Domonkos chuckled.

"I ain't scared of a few EPA spooks." When I came back into the living room, I summarized the call for Megan. She leaned on Nathan, resting her head on his chest.

"But what could it be?" Megan asked.

"We didn't see any signs of the goblins having enemies inside the caves. All their fortifications assumed danger came from the entrance. They would have walled off the deeper passages if there were threats in those directions, right?"

"That's a good point. Sorry to interrupt. We can get back to Louis."

"There's no replacing BiggerGinger," LootLootLouis told the stream, looking directly into the camera on his follower drone, his long dreads framing his face. He was in the middle of a C-ranked crawl, an undead variant of an orc dungeon.

"Does the party need a new white mage? Yes, we do. But replacing Ginger… That's like saying I lost a brother, so I need to get a new brother. Nah, man. Can't do that. I'm certain we can find another party member that we trust and love as much as Ginger, but the hole he left in our lives will always be there." Chat responded immediately. RIP B-G we miss you ginger Survival of the fittest. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Yeah, git gud or gtfo Wow That's so f'ed up lmao User removed by moderator. User removed by moderator.

"Dude, as much as I love watching his stuff, I would totally understand if Louis said, 'fuck this,' and never streamed again," Nathan said.

"People are so mean," Beth agreed.

"Do you think he even reads chat anymore? He must not be if he's that calm."

"I definitely wouldn't." Were I in Louis' place, I wouldn't put myself through that. Like Nathan said, I probably would have hung it up long ago. How could you be excited to entertain your audience when they say awful things about your dead friend?

"We're going to get back to the run in a minute," Louis continued, looking over his shoulder at his party. They sat or leaned against the dungeon wall, drinking from water bottles and Nad-Nade cans. A few waved at the camera, but most ignored it completely.

"Valcuree has been pretty open about all this New Eden business. I wasn't going to talk about it on stream, but Val, you kind of forced my hand. Was I offered a contract to close gates for New Eden? Yes, I was. Honestly, the money is insane. I could live in a beautiful part of the world for two years, do the one thing I'm good at, and then never need to work again.

"Am I taking the offer, though? No, I'm not. As good as the pay would be, it doesn't change the fact that these are extremists. Many of these people either had a hand in killing crawlers or were vocally supportive of gate crashes and guild hall attacks. I am totally in favor of helping resettlers, so don't get me wrong there. In fact, there's a chance we spend some time in Australia, but I can't talk about that yet."

"Does that mean New Zealand gave him an offer?" Megan asked.

"Or is there another country talking about reclaiming Australia?"

"Japan has talked about it a few times," I answered.

"With how crazy the gate ranks are down there, anyone who manages to clear and hold it would almost instantly be the wealthiest nation in the world. New Zealand is the only one seriously planning, at least as far as I've heard." Nathan nodded.

"He's definitely got an offer from New Zealand. That's the only country it could be." Beth, sitting on the floor, looked back over her shoulder at Nathan.

"The US isn't interested in Australia?"

"I'm sure they are. Everyone is 'interested' because damn, who wouldn't be? If New Eden wasn't a thing and the military was done babysitting South America, I'd say the US was a contender, but I don't think they can mobilize another giant crawler effort."

"That makes sense," Beth replied.

"Finding crawlers has to be the easiest part, though."

"Huh?" Nathan leaned forward.

"What do you mean?"

"Someone like Louis is built for that challenge, but most harvesters are regular people. That's where the money is, right? In the harvests?"

"Ohhh." Nathan pointed at Beth.

"Yeah. You're right.

'Here's a free house. Keep an eye out for the dread widow. It's been spotted on a few doorbell cameras, so you know, stay alert!'" We all laughed. A dread widow was an A-ranked spider boss and roughly the size of a Tilt a Whirl. That makes it sound like it would be easy to find, but there are two problems there: First, Australia is deceptively massive. While the number of square miles isn't perfectly equal, Australia is roughly the same distance across, top-to-bottom and east-to-west as the United States.

Yes, a dread widow is a really freaking big monster, but so is the space you need to search to find it. Second, dread widows take after trapdoor spiders. They don't spin massive webs to ensnare prey. They hide underground and snatch food when it wanders close. That innocent-looking playground could actually rest on the back of a dread widow, but you don't know it until it bursts out of the ground to drag you under.

The effectiveness of their hiding skills was scary, but for me, the scariest part of dread widows was what we didn't know. Dread widows in the wilds had been observed setting up a burrow, and though a satellite stayed trained on that exact spot, the dread widow relocated to another burrow entirely without being seen. Biologists and physicists have thus far been at a loss for how that could be possible.

"Magic" is the obvious explanation, but most people consider that a nonanswer. We need to observe the dread widow using said magic at the very least.

"I don't think it would be that hard to recruit workers," I said.

"You're crazy," Nathan replied.

"That's so dangerous." Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"People do dangerous stuff for money all the time. Megan can confirm this because it's in our safety training. One out of every thousand loggers is killed on the job. Fishing and hunting jobs are a little bit better, but only just barely. And then roofing is close to one in two thousand for fatalities. Roofing!

"The California Gold Rush? 15% died, and that's without factoring in Native American deaths, which there were a bunch. Steelworkers? I mean, remember those pictures of dudes eating lunch dozens of stories up as casually as sitting on a park bench? What about the military? That's big risk for money. Ever hear the Chemical Worker's Song? They say something like one day at work is two days closer to death. Like, that's an exaggeration, but it's not that much of an exaggeration when you're breathing toxic shit all day.

"Megan and I are hunting wild monsters for YouTube views for Christ's sake. That's a pretty damn dangerous way to earn a few bucks." Nathan raised his hands.

"I surrender, bro. You've convinced me that people would risk monster attacks for cash. It's wild the CDM put the California Gold Rush in their trainings, though."

"They didn't," Megan clarified. I nodded.

"She's right. I read about that before. Same thing with the Chemical Worker's Song. I got on a folk music cover kick for a while and came across it. Got curious, so I looked up the stuff they talked about."

"How do you remember all that?" Nathan asked. I answered, "Wish I could tell you. If this Australia project comes to life, the real question will be if workers are compensated relative to the risk. Most of my examples were people trading their health for pennies because they didn't have a choice."

"Didn't mean to get you riled up, bro, but now I am too. What do you do with all this outrage once you get it boiling?" Shrugging, I said, "Go to work the next day because I need money too."

"Speaking of training," Megan began, very obviously trying to change the subject.

"Have any of you looked into magery builds?"

"Who hasn't?" Nathan asked.

"She's embarrassed about it and wants it to be a secret, but I want to help her if I can."

"I don't get it. Who's embarrassed?"

"De Saint. My new partner." Nathan and I both sat up. What was a born-wizard-class doing working at the CDM? They got scouted out of elementary school, and the offers were lucrative.

"Her parents wanted her to have a normal childhood," Megan explained, "so they didn't disclose her class. She's level 1 and has never been in a dungeon. I feel like her fear is keeping her from taking the easy levels, but I also don't know how to help her. I thought maybe build options would give her a nudge." Megan's phone buzzed.

"Hello? Yes. Okay. Thank you." Nathan looked up as she stood.

"Called in for a gate?" She nodded.

"Be safe, please." Megan kissed Nathan on the cheek.

"See you late tonight, if you're still up."

"It's always hard to sleep when you're crawling." She flexed and smiled.

"I'm more of a monster than the monsters. I'll be fine." I hoped to get called in for a run like Megan, but I had no such luck. Our upcoming hunting trip would scratch that itch. Well, it would scratch it a little. By the time it was over, I'd be even more pissed because of how crap wild XP was. The next day was more watching monitors. The only moment of note was receiving an email from the Invasive Species Intervention team at the EPA.

The person I talked to the day before gave my information to Kwame Imani, Director of Invasive Species Intervention, who then emailed me directly. Enforcer Carmino, We do not have a process in place with the CDM that standardizes information sharing. It's clear that needs to change. I am reaching out to Enforcer Chapman directly to coordinate those efforts. I suspect you'll hear more about that soon. In the meantime, I spoke with the GIS team.

By the end of the day, Sites of Concern should begin updating every four hours as well as include what monsters are reportedly in the area. Please remember that these sightings are not always confirmed. Most of that data comes from other agencies, but a handful comes from private citizens. We take their word for it until we have the chance to investigate. Thank you for making me aware of this opportunity. Kwame Imani Director of Invasive Species Intervention Environmental Protection Agency What. That was it?

All it took to get the SOC data was asking for it? I don't know that Imani would have made those concessions if RAID wasn't a part of the conversation, but he sounded nonchalant about taking that data public, like it wasn't a big deal. Maybe I had been too protective of that information after all, but then again, how would I have known differently? Regardless, this was a big win. Megan and I had too many close calls already. Our luck was bound to run out if we kept pushing it. No more diving blindly into a hunt.

True to his word, the GIS information updated just like Imani said it would. When Megan and I went out again, we'd know to expect goblins. We were still avoiding trolls. And giant snakes. And holy crap, there was a harpy nest just over the border in West Virginia. My curiosity getting the better of me, I checked out SOCs in other states. The number of giant roach SOCs in the deep south gave me the heebie-jeebies, though, so I stopped. Goblins for now were fine.

The town of Jeanette was a forty-five-minute drive from my apartment, making it one of the closest SOCs Megan and I had ever investigated. A fair number of people still lived in the area, but they had adopted a literal "wrong side of the tracks" design as part of that transition. Railroad tracks bisected the original Jeanette, with many of the industrial structures ending up on the south side. As those jobs disappeared, that section of town became increasingly less traveled.

Eventually, the handful of residents near the old factories were so surrounded by blight, vermin, and potentially dangerous waste that they moved to the north side of town. Now a long, tall fence ran along the tracks to physically separate the living parts of the town from the blight. That made driving to the SOC a little more challenging than usual. After an hour of surprise dead ends and road closures, we got within a half mile of it on a road that led directly to our target.

We might have been able to get closer, but Megan and I agreed that a slightly longer walk was a worthwhile trade for how straightforward navigation would be. As we quietly walked down the street, my bow at the ready, I wondered what someone would think of us if we were spotted traipsing through their neighborhood.

Not only were we in our crawl kits, but we also wore bandoliers of mismatched flares and smoke signals, had sheathed crowbars strapped to our backs, had utility belts with flashlights, binoculars, and knives around our waists, and were followed by a drone. Megan interrupted my daydreaming with a finger point.

"Is that the SOC?" she whispered, pointing to a red brick building rising above the ruins. I immediately understood her concern. We had a good idea of the footprint of this location thanks to satellite imagery, but we didn't know that one of the structures was eight or nine stories tall. The site was comprised of three major structures and was roughly 100 yards by 100 yards.

The largest building occupied half of that property, and I assumed it was a big warehouse like we saw at the barge builders from our first hunt way back. That looked to be the case, but one of the buildings that looked smaller on the satellite images, some 60 yards long compared to 100, looked like a freaking castle in person. Most of it was in the ballpark of three or four stories tall, but then a tower rose from one of the corners, roughly eight stories in total.

From where we stood in the ruins, we couldn't immediately tell how much area that tower occupied, but I guessed the side facing me was something like 15 yards across, based on the windows I could see. Up until that point, our hunts had limited verticality. We might end up on a second floor, but mostly we stayed on the ground. When I worked with Sean at the DOH to sweep abandoned houses for residents, we frequently skipped higher floors because the staircases up were untrustworthy.

And then E and D gates were mostly one-level affairs, so we didn't have any practice fighting upward from those runs either. A scouting drone with thermal imaging would be really useful right about now.

"What do you think we should do?" I whispered back. At the same time, I guided Megan over a few feet toward an abandoned house. If goblins were in the tower, the smart move would be to put lookouts up there. If that ended up being the case, they may have already spotted us. But if they hadn't, breaking that line of sight would help. She wrinkled her face.

"I'd like to do the tower first so we have the view of the property, but I don't like the idea of getting stuck a few floors up because the stairs are overrun below." We had a similar experience with two trolls we met in a high school. We ended up on the third floor with nowhere to go. I very much disliked how that felt.

"I feel the same way about the tower. Taking it first is too risky. How about we search the big building and then check out the tower? We should approach from the far end of the property regardless. Could be lookouts up there."

"That's a good point. Yeah, let's use your plan." Instead of following the road straight in, we now turned onto a side street, went down five houses or so, and then cut across old residential lots to come at the property from the back. In its prime, Fort Pitt Brewing Company owned this land, one of multiple breweries it operated around Pittsburgh to keep up with a growing demand for Fort Pitt Beer.

In 1952, all of the brewery workers in the city went on strike, which was over two thousand people across three major breweries. Gate chaos still ran high at that time, and with so many men drafted to cull dungeons, jobs were competitive, but the pay and conditions were shit. Steelworkers were on strike at the same time, incidentally, but the beer strike went long. Consumers bought national brands instead, and when the strike ended, they didn't go back to drinking local beer. Fort Pitt Beer never really recovered.

I had hoped to find old floor plans or some clues as to the layout of the operation, but as our surprise to the tower probably revealed, I didn't find anything useful. The only major piece of intel I came away with was that we shouldn't go into the basement. For years, residents had complained about over three million gallons of water trapped there, saying that it was toxic from industrial waste runoff and represented a major danger to the water table.

Not that I would have gone for a swim, but learning that made me especially wary of falling through the floor. This edge of the brewery butted right up against backyards, so we stepped through tall grass and around collapsed sheds to reach the rear of the largest building. At first glance, every window and door on the ground level was boarded shut. Megan pointed to the sill on one of the windows. The edge was caked with dry mud, and that wasn't the case for any other window in sight.

Slowly and gently, she hooked a finger under the sheet of plywood covering the window. It drifted forward like the flap on a doggy door. At first, I thought the goblins built a hinge of some sort, but nope, the top edge was all nails. Every movement wore and loosened the wood a little bit more. If we gave it a tug, I suspected it would easily come down. Megan looked back at me with a question in her body language. Yeah, let's do this.