Chương 74: CDM 2, Chapter 10: Roadmap

On our way back from hunting, Megan checked her email.

"Chapman just approved coordinated days off," she announced, her eyes not leaving her screen.

"Huh?"

"She said it's fine to make sure we get the same days off."

"Just like that?"

"I guess so. All I really did was ask. Nothing crazy happened."

"What did you tell her?" Megan shut off her screen and dropped her phone in her lap.

"I told her we were playing with a video recording side business, and it would help us both out if we could keep that going alongside CDM duties. No complaints about hours or shifting schedules. We just want one day a week with the same day off."

"That's it?"

"She asked me why you didn't come see her too."

"What'd you say?"

"That you were scared of her and really didn't want to let her down."

"You did not."

"I did." Groaning, I said, "Way to throw me to the wolves."

"Are you kidding? She actually smiled. It was just a crack, and it didn't stay long, but I swear to God that woman was genuinely amused. I played it the right way, obviously." Megan wiggled her phone at me.

"If you say so."

"De Saint has been a pretty great partner," Megan said after a lull.

"How is Cortez?"

"Seems like a cool guy. We've been getting along."

"De Saint is shy, but she is crazy smart. It's like she remembers everything she's ever read. That's so helpful to have in the field."

"Yeah, we could have pulled worse partners." Megan nodded.

"I think she's coming around to leveling. If you had to recommend a build to her, what would it be?" I laughed. Megan had mentioned that de Saint was a level 1 mage whose parents kept her class hidden to protect her childhood.

"What?" she asked.

"I don't really know anything about her, and I'm definitely not an expert."

"I'm asking your opinion. That's all." I thought.

"Has she picked a spell school?" Megan shook her head.

"From what I've read, that's what most wizards use to decide what kind of build they want. Basically, if you like a certain school of spells more than others, that's the one to base your build on."

"If it were you, what would you pick?" she asked. Every kid wished they were born a mage, and I was a kid once. I read all of the build guides, spending hours designing my perfect mage profile–hours of planning and strategizing for a class I'd never have. De Saint had so many options, though. Unlike the martial classes, a mage could customize their build a dozen different ways, and a few fundamental choices could dramatically change what a wizard would do for the rest of their career.

At level 1, all mages are given the same basic spells, but they aren't usable until the person decides whether they will learn black magic or white magic. Those starting spells include Arrow, Create Food, Create Water, Create Fire, Light, and Prestidigitation. De Saint had already picked black. Children often made that choice without their parents knowing simply because they wanted to play with the base spells. I wouldn't have blamed de Saint if she were one of those kids. Now things get complicated.

At level 2, a black mage is given a choice of 5 schools of magic: School Elemental Magic - Bolt, Fire, Ice, Stone School of Ailments - Poison, Weaken, Clumsy School of Summoning - Summon Animal, Summon Minor Elemental School of Force - Slash, Push, Pull School of Illusion - Dark, Fog, Blur, Projection A mage can unlock every school of magic if they want, but each school counts as a level-up selection.

In other words, choosing to take another school of magic after the first meant not taking an ability that improved another aspect of your build, like increasing the power of your spells or expanding your mana pool. Later, wizards could upgrade a chosen school in two ways: Learn more spells from that school and/or upgrade all the spells in that school to a higher tier. The first school expansion for the School of Elemental magic added Resist Element, Earth Barrier, Ice Barrier, and Gale.

Upgrading the same school to the next tier instead, however, gave the mage Bolt 2, Ice 2, Fire 2, and Stone 2–all stronger, more dynamic versions of the base spells. A fire magic specialist would only take the elemental school, choose unlocks that strengthened only one spell (fire, obviously), and then choose unlocks that made their specialization more powerful but required the mage to permanently forget spells. Many fire mages lost the ability to cast any elements except for fire and earth, for example.

A really hardcore fire specialist passed on learning new spells of any kind so they could use every unlock to juice the base spell instead.

"Wizard builds have way too much variation for me to suggest something for someone I don't know," I said.

"If she picked a starting school, that would help a lot."

"I'm trying not to push her too hard," Megan replied.

"I'll try to get a read on her."

"This is important to you, huh?"

"If she still decides she isn't interested in leveling, I'll respect that. Right now, I see an awesome person who is afraid."

"A few levels can make a big difference," I added.

"Exactly."

"I don't mind doing some reading, but talking to her directly is probably the next best step. There are too many preference options for us to play messenger."

"Deal. Thank you, Dor."

"For what?"

"Being willing to help."

"Don't worry about it. This stuff is fun for me."

"Still," Megan said.

"You're a good dude." When Monday arrived again, I had an email from Enforcer Chapman. It read:"Good work on the EPA connection." And that was it. Was I recovering Chapman's respect for me? Maybe not yet, but this felt like progress. Other than that one positive line from Chapman, the most exciting part of that week was dungeon crawling. I got lucky and drew two runs, but they were both E-ranked. One was goblins and one was vermin, earning a whopping 177 XP. Combined.

Participating in boss fights helped make E gates a little bit more worthwhile, thankfully. I checked my progress to level 7: XP Progress: 869/3200 This was taking forever. Cortez had only been in Pittsburgh for a few weeks, and he was outraged at how few gates he pulled. Level 10 felt close to him the day he left Nevada, but now he wasn't sure he'd cover that ground before spring. The approaching Pittsburgh winter only pushed him deeper into grumpiness.

Megan and I knocked out a small goblin nest on our shared Friday off–thirteen grunts in an old farmhouse. Nothing remarkable, but it was content. The brewery hunt was doing surprisingly well in terms of view counts, but I credited that to Megan's editing. She cut it together like an action movie. We got back to the city late that night, and I was settling in to catch up on LootLootLouis runs. There were three I hadn't seen. One B-ranked and two A. Enforcer McDouglas texted me a link. Oh, great.

Martin Kielar was part of a press conference earlier that day. He was joined by the Allegheny Delvers guild master and the team leads for the Iron Crawlers and the Furious Few. I couldn't tell where they were, but Kielar stood at a podium while the others stood behind him, looking serious and imposing.

"Crawlers put their lives on the line every day to keep working people safe from dungeon surges," he began.

"It's a hard job. It's often a thankless job. But we believe in it. And that belief has become a way of life for our families. One of our own is under attack, and we can't sit quietly by.

"George Baker has served this city for over a decade and is the subject of a witch hunt. In the United States, we have the right to protect what's ours. It's fundamental to who we are as a nation. George paid for that gate. It was his. And when he went inside to do the work that feeds his family, he countered poachers. Armed thieves. Dangerous people that lie and deceive to catch you by surprise.

"George is facing jail time for simple self-defense, and even worse, he never hurt anyone. Fearing for his life, he tried to scare the thieves. That's all he did. The CDM even admits that's what the video shows. Nobody got hurt, but we're treating him like a killer. This is wrong, and we cannot let it stand.

"But we need your help. You, the life and blood of this city. We need you to raise your voices and call for George's immediate release." Such horse shit. The camera personas were so practiced and so polished. They wanted people to think of them as heroes, so that's what they pretended to be. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. #FreeGeorge was trending. What the hell. Why did people eat this up so easily?

That man looked me in the eye and told me he was going to kill me. He smiled when he said it. Every second of that interaction was on video. Plain as day. Now soccer moms called for his release. There were supposed to be consequences for treating people like that. You couldn't just point a sword at someone and tell them they were about to die. But if that person was a charismatic crawler, the laws didn't apply. I guess that was the norm for the rich and famous in general, and it pissed me off.

"He's going to go free, isn't he?" Beth asked me after a closing shift at Milly's.

"There's a good chance, yes." She deflated. I sat up from my spot on the couch.

"Come here." As soon as my arms opened, Beth dropped onto the couch with me, as if all the strength left her body just then.

"They fucking killed him," she whimpered. Not knowing what to say, I simply rubbed her back.

"I think about it all the time. About him suffering. About how scared he was."

"I do too."

"I don't feel like I've slept since I left home. I'm so tired, Dor."

"You haven't taken any time off," I said.

"I know Frank's a hardass, but even those types understand what losing someone is like." She shook her head without lifting it from my chest.

"I can't risk it. I can't lose the apprenticeship too."

"What about a weekend? Take off from Milly's for a Friday to Sunday."

"And do what? Wallow?"

"Take a quick trip. A few people at work have talked about Lake Erie. It wouldn't even cost you anything." Beth sat forward to blow her nose. Seeing her face streaked with tears broke my heart.

"What do you mean it won't cost anything?" she asked.

"One of the guys I work with has the hookup for hotels somehow. I don't understand how it works, but I can make it happen. Maybe take one of your friends from Milly's? It might be snowing up there already, but it will at least be a change of scenery."

"You won't go with me?" Sighing, I said, "I can't. But you can, and you might enjoy it." I expected her to call out my hypocrisy. I had just gotten done telling her how important time off was but wouldn't take my own advice.

"Okay. I'll do it."

"Tell me what days you want. Food is included in his package by the way, so you and your friend don't have to spend any money if you don't want to." Beth hugged me again.

"Thank you for being my brother." Enforcer Cortez and I had a Saturday shift of inspecting harvest sites. While I was happy to be away from the RAID screens, the weather sucked. Painfully cold rain fell with unwavering steadiness all day. My tablet stopped working altogether. Cortez guessed it was water damage. I hadn't dropped it or anything, but it was out with me in the wind for several hours. Which meant issuing citations on paper and taking the carbon copy back to the office to log in the system.

You know those pads with three different colored sheets of paper, white, pink, and yellow? That was a Stone Age process at this point, but it's what I had. Not surprisingly, paper and pencil didn't do great in the rain either, but I pushed through. When our shift ended, I still had a bunch of office work to finish since none of those hand-issued citations were in the system yet. As I mentally prepared myself for a late night, Cortez asked me, "Could I take you up on that drink offer?"

We had been working together for a few weeks now, and this was the first time he wanted to socialize. Whether that was him opening up or wanting some company during a hard time, I couldn't turn him down now. I could come in tomorrow and finish this in the morning. Milly's was busy, given it was Saturday evening, but we squeezed by a full bar and claimed a high top in the corner. Beth came over, smiling.

"Cortez, meet my sister, Beth."

"Dante is fine. Pleased to meet you." That's right. Normal people used first names.

"Oh, you're the new partner!" Beth replied, ignoring Cortez's offer of a handshake to hug him instead.

"Dor seems to like working with you, and that's a high bar." Cortez laughed.

"Yeah, I could have ended up with a worse partner, that's for sure."

"Drinks?" Beth asked.

"Got anything local on tap?"

"Iron City."

"I'll try that then," Cortez said.

"When in Rome, as they say." I nodded to Beth that I would have the same. She smiled and returned to the busy bar. Cortez turned his attention back to me.

"She lives in the city then? Close to you?" Laughing, I replied.

"She's living with me right now."

"No way, man. I got an older sister, and I love her, but it's always been no holds barred with us. She's got that latina anger, and if we're together too long, I set it off."

"Any other brothers and sisters?"

"Had a little brother. Cancer got him at six."

"Geez, I'm sorry to hear that." Cortez waved the thought away.

"Lots of people have that story. It's too common if you ask me." Our conversation paused when another bartender dropped off our beers. If he was running drinks, then Beth was probably getting busy.

"He was braver than me," Cortez continued, watching the bubbles in his beer.

"I remember my mom taking both of us to his chemo appointments. Whole rooms full of kids like my brother. Freaked me out, but not Daniel. That kid's chin never went down."

"Sounds like a good guy."

"Yeah, but enough of that. You see the latest DD video?"

"DD?"

"Dungeon Divas."

"Oh," I said, trying to keep my composure.

"Yeah, I'm caught up. The farmhouse was the most recent, right?"

"Yeah, but brother, that one before that? That tower climb was awesome. I don't know how goblin fights can feel that intense. Or how they find these nests so often."

"It was definitely cool."

"Do you think they're crawlers? I don't think they are."

"Why do you say that?"

"Haven't seen any new abilities from either of them in a while. If they're wild leveling, that's going to take forever, but I've read a few posts saying they're crashers. So they're getting XP but in small doses." I leaned back, nodding.

"That's a pretty good theory."

"I'd like to see them do a crawl. Just to see how they handle it. I think they'd struggle."

"Really?"

"What? You don't think so? There's so much more volume in a crawl. That's a different animal from wild monsters. Way different." My phone buzzed. It wasn't a crawl. It was a text from Nathan.

"dude you still at Milly's?"

"Si." Did I really just use Spanish because a Mexican guy was with me? Holy shit, I was so freaking white.

"can i come?"

"Yes." I set my phone down.

"That was my roommate. I hope that's cool."

"Of course. No worries." Cortez asked me if there was anything venomous in Pittsburgh, which led to him telling stories about scorpions in Nevada. One of his coworkers stepped on one and almost had their foot amputated when the exceptionally venomous sting combined with an infection. Cortez said that even though he knew he was in Pittsburgh, he still caught himself emptying his boots in the morning just to be sure nothing snuck in overnight.

The more I let him talk, the more I realized how many people he had been close to back home. All of his friends and family were there, and he sounded like he loved his CDM team there too. I knew what it was like to venture to a whole new city all alone. It sucked. I hoped going out like this helped it suck a little bit less. Nathan emerged from the crowd around the bar a few minutes later. I hadn't seen him come in, but he had obviously been here for a little bit.

If he had only just come in the door, he wouldn't have six shots in his hands, the glasses wedged between his fingers in seemingly impossible contortions. He set them down on the table and gave me a quizzical eyebrow raise.

"I thought you said there were six of us?" Not once did we confirm an attendance number. I had a feeling I knew what was next.

"Well, I guess that means we all have to take two," he said, as he pushed two glasses to me and then two to Cortez.

"I'm Nathan, by the way." Cortez shook Nathan's hand.

"Dante. Thank you for the drinks." Grinning, Nathan raised one of his shots to Cortez and threw it back. We followed suit, and I was the only one gasping for air as I fought to untangle the twisted expression straight vodka gave me. Nathan did a little shiver, but Cortez only released the slightest hiss, like you did when something was particularly refreshing. And we did the second. I coughed a few times on that one. Cortez and I both chased ours with beer. Nathan didn't have one, so he drank some of mine.

"So Dor and I have been talking about going in on a place together," Nathan explained to Cortez as he pulled up his phone.

"I think I found the spot." He sat the phone so that Cortez could see the screen as well as I did. This was one of the reasons I loved the guy. Nathan and Cortez had just met, and Nathan came to the bar specifically to speak with me. He could have easily left Cortez sitting idly while we talked, but Nathan included him immediately, and it was so natural that I knew it was an automatic choice in his mind.

He didn't need to think about what the kind thing to do would be because it was exactly what he was going to do anyway. That same quality was why we became friends in the first place. He simply made sure I was included for little things like getting lunch together or walking to the drugstore late at night for some candy bars. Those moments went a long way to helping me escape my shell.

"It will need some work," Nathan added, as he started swiping through pictures of a red brick building. It looked a lot like the brewery Megan and I had just cleared. Just as old. Just as rundown. I almost asked if there was a toxic swimming pool in the basement too.

"What's a lot of work then?" Cortez asked.

"Building it from scratch?"

"This is like them giving you the wood and wheels for the pinewood derby," Nathan countered. Chuckling, Cortez leaned back to take a drink of beer, but his eyes never left the phone screen.

"Apparently there used to be a fine dinnerware business here back in the day," Nathan continued.

"They made and painted the plates and cups and shit." He swiped through three floors of open, dusty warehouse. It wasn't anywhere near as big as the brewery, of course. Based on the outside photo, it was about as wide as two storefronts side by side and then fairly deep. Smaller than the brewery, sure, but still massive.

"We could rent out the first floor or something if we don't need the space," Nathan said, cycling back to the earliest photos on the listing.

"But maybe Beth needs a woodshop, or you want an indoor archery range. Bro, could be anything. Then divide the rest into three apartments and a common area. Or we really ball and make the whole first floor a common area. Could do four apartments then. I don't mean literal apartments like closed off, but like private "wings" so everyone has their own space, but we're all still connected." He barely breathed during that explanation.

"That's why it's good it's a blank slate. We don't gotta knock anything down. Everything we need access to is exposed. Won't be hard to put up air ducts and run wire, you know?"

"You in the trades?" Cortez asked.

"Yep. HVAC."

"So you have friends that could help you if you run into something." Nathan grinned.

"Yeah, dude. You totally get it. So, Dor, what do you think?"

"The concept is awesome, but that's easy to say as someone who isn't building it."

"No, no, dude. You're definitely building it."

"I don't know anything about construction."

"That's why I'll give you the simple stuff," Nathan countered.

"You are for sure helping me with this."

"Okay. I'll do my best."

"I'm going to look at it tomorrow." I almost spit out my drink.

"What?"

"I have a Christmas bonus coming up and a few bucks squirreled away. We'll need time to work on it before we can move in, and if we wait, someone else might buy it."

"Uhh… But I-" Nathan cut me off.

"We can talk about the specifics later. You guys hungry? I ordered a bunch of shit, and I can't eat it all." Did he know I was about to tell him I didn't have any money to contribute? I suspected he did, and he was sparing my feelings. What an asshole.