Chương 91: CDM 2, Chapter 27: Seminar

We took two boats to the coast the next morning, one for the crawl team accompanying Megan and me and another for the team accompanying Nathan and Beth. The ride was wet and cold, but I didn't care. Seeing the wild coast of China grow larger and larger as we approached made me think of explorers of old. I wondered if they felt a similar sense of awe and discovery as I felt then. Such a beautiful place, wholly untamed.

We were definitely not the first to set foot on a Chinese beach, but since the gates, that list was limited to a rare few, relative to the world's population. Our boats drove right up onto the sand. As we disembarked, I found my way to Nathan, despite us not riding in together.

"You okay?" I whispered.

"Bro, no. I'm scared shitless."

"I get it, but you're going to do alright. These guys have done this dozens of times, and your party is pretty fucking stacked for running E gates." Each group had six guides and two camera people, and the class makeup was the same for both groups: One ranger, two defenders, one white mage, and two black mages. I gathered that their method was fairly simple: the defenders Taunt non-stop while the white mage buffs.

The black mages pitched in here and there, but mostly they were on standby to nuke the dungeon if things got too hairy. Dawit was the ranger for our party. He carried a bow, a sword, and a pack. The defenders carried giant kite shields and both swords and maces. They wore black chainmail beneath their military fatigues, and pieces of platemail were tied to their packs. I assumed they would equip that armor when we reached a gate.

The mages looked like typical contract mercenaries, save for glistening rings and necklaces. Those were enchanted, and I realized all of our escorts likely had similar items, but they were hidden beneath gloves and armor. Oddly, the mages all carried quivers full of arrows. Those were for my benefit, I learned later, since I would need a lot of them.

My kit was mostly the same as it always was, but I was given a real bandolier with two incendiary grenades and a smoke signal strapped to it, and they gave Megan the same. Beth and Nathan were both given spears, and we were all given rings of Stoneskin, improving our damage resistance by 10%.

"You're sure I can do this?" Nathan asked.

"Yes. After the first dungeon, you'll feel a lot better. I promise." He swallowed.

"Alright." I patted him on the back. Dawit addressed everyone on the beach.

"Both parties will take separate routes. Our guests need not worry. We have the locations for our chosen gates mapped out already, and we know the area well. We'll camp twice and come back the third day. Any final questions?" None of my group had any.

"Good crawling," Dawit said and hiked into the woods. The skippers piloting the boats sped away, heading back to the yacht. One of our defenders and then a black mage followed directly behind Dawit. Then Megan and I came next, followed by the white mage and the other black mage. Our second defender brought up the rear. The camera operators changed positions frequently, sometimes trailing way behind, sometimes running ahead, and sometimes right in our faces.

They didn't seem worried about being separated from the party if we encountered a threat. Apparently, Bluewater regularly searched this area for wild monsters to cull between guided trips. That didn't mean we wouldn't see wild monsters, but we were far less likely to run into something that posed a true threat to the group. When I first heard about this trip, I pictured monsters everywhere, but that wasn't the case.

Losing a billionaire client in the wilds would be very bad for business, so Bluewater went to great lengths to make this process as safe as possible. To be honest, that disappointed me. This sanitized version didn't feel like the "real" wilds. But the hike was beautiful. The ghosts of old roads were still visible, giving us relatively clear paths to follow. At first, the ruins of old China were all around us. These used to be fishing villages, but nature had reclaimed most everything.

Fishermen weren't well-off, so their homes were made of wood and bamboo for the most part. Those materials didn't last long in a tropical region prone to monsoons. Occasionally, we left the road to use a well-trodden footpath, and then we'd be back on an old road again. Dawit never once looked at a map but still took every step with certainty. Seeing him so comfortable this far from civilization made the ranger class much more appealing in my mind. I wanted to have that level of confidence when I was off the grid.

We took a turn, and suddenly we were surrounded by stone masonry and had cobblestone streets beneath our feet. Though the jungle had wrapped everything in green, the bones of the town were still strong. Dawit stopped us in between two buildings and pointed across the way, and I knew immediately what he wanted us to see. Amongst the ruins of smaller homes was a massive gray box with two pointed rooftops. The building had windows, but none near ground level.

"That is Zhaojiabao," Dawit said.

"The Zhao family castle. They fled here to escape the mongols and built this castle. Amazing that it's stood since the 1600s, right?" Megan and I nodded.

"Our itinerary does not bring us closer, unfortunately, but I thought you might enjoy the history." We nodded to that too. We made a few more turns and stopped in front of a freestanding mineshaft entrance. This was an undead variant of a D-ranked goblin gate. With two defenders using Taunt and a white mage buffing us, we cleared the dungeon in two and a half hours and immediately set off for our next gate. I checked my XP progress: XP Progress: 1342/6400 A little over 1100 XP for a D gate wasn't bad.

Megan and I getting nearly all of the kills definitely made a difference. We reached the second D gate nearly two hours of hiking later. This was my first dungeon with kobolds, goblin-sized lizard-humanoids that loved spears and bows. The dungeon was a cave system, and we repeated the process from the first. The two defenders stood up front, used Taunt, and let the kobolds wail on them while Megan and I killed the monsters. Not a single spear or arrow seemed to bother the defenders.

In fact, they hardly moved at all. I checked my XP progress again: XP Progress: 2657/6400 That run netted me a little over 1300 XP. The third gate was deep in the bush. Our speed slowed because of the terrain, and we arrived shortly before sundown. Surrounded by jungle, animal skins hung across a lone wooden door frame. I had never seen animal skins on a dungeon entrance before.

"This is a C gate," Dawit announced. Between the hiking and the back-to-back crawls, I was exhausted. I really hoped we weren't about to do a third gate, but Dawit stood by it like he was heading in at any moment. Dawit nodded his head at one of the defenders and watched them enter the gate.

"We will run this gate in the morning," Dawit added.

"We will camp here." Megan and I looked around. There wasn't an open, flat piece of ground anywhere near us. The defender reemerged from the gate.

"Gnolls. Campsite is clear." Dawit replied, "Thank you." Then, to the rest of the group, he said, "Let's go." We followed him into the gate. We exited into a wide ravine of red-brown rocks. A yellow sky with gray clouds was overhead. Though evening approached outside of the gate, the dungeon was lit like it was midday. Dawit looked around at the dusty ground approvingly and dropped his pack.

"We will camp here and run the dungeon in the morning."

"I didn't know we would camp inside of gates," Megan said, more surprised than concerned. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

"It is safest," Dawit explained.

"Monsters and animals will not enter a gate, so this protects us from a number of living dangers, many of which come out at night. I do not recommend being in the wilds after dark. The best part, though? No rain inside of most dungeons."

"What if the monsters in here come this way?"

"We keep watch so that you may sleep without fear. In this dungeon, we aren't likely to see any gnolls until we venture deeper." We ate sandwiches and rice in a brown sauce. They heated the rice in a pot over the fire. One of the mages even offered Megan and me wine. We declined, but apparently it was common for their other clients to treat this downtime like a luxury picnic. I knew that Dawit and his party were legitimate crawlers, and I didn't dislike them. Trusting them enough to get sauced in a dungeon, though?

Nope.

"Why haven't we been collecting crystals?" I asked between bites of egg salad.

"Client time is worth more," Dawit answered simply.

"We lose money if we slow down to harvest." All that money just left to disappear when the gate closed. Back home, crashers risked their lives to collect even a handful of D-ranked crystals, but here, they weren't worth the effort. I felt guilty every time we walked by a monster corpse and left it untouched. It was wasteful, but Dawit and his party weren't bothered. That was their standard operating procedure, so it seemed mundane to them.

I thought I might struggle to sleep in a place with permanent daylight, but as soon as I closed my eyes, I was out. Gnolls are essentially humanoid hyenas, preferring to be optimistic ambush predators rather than fight prey head-on. Most of them wielded smooth crafted clubs while a few exceptions were armed with spears or bows. The dungeon itself was akin to the African savanna. Much of it was open field with tall grass, sometimes as tall as I was, punctuated by pockets of forest.

The perimeter of the dungeon was surrounded by the same cliffsides we saw when we made camp. In the distance, they looked like walls, not something natural. I was thankful Dawit was a ranger. Fifteen minutes into the trek through the grass, he raised a hand and pointed to multiple locations around us. One defender took position on either side of the party, and moments later, gnolls burst from the grass to attack.

They used the tall grass as cover, often traveling on all fours to stay completely hidden up until they pounced. Dawit always knew they were coming, so we didn't get caught by surprise a single time. On a few occasions, however, the black mages sniped enemies that either resisted Taunt or had managed to get too close to Megan or me. A hyena bit Megan's sword arm at one point as well, but the white mage healed it immediately.

The boss for the dungeon was a trio of gnoll shamans who summoned three hellhounds to fight for them. That encounter felt more like an actual dungeon fight, as most of the party contributed instead of sitting back and watching Megan and me kill stuff. On the way out, I pulled up my system profile. Dorion Carmino Class: Archer Level: 8 XP Progress: 79/12800 Hell yeah.

I knew from my build guide what to take, but I could pick from these three unlocks: Flow State Class: Archer Type: Ability Cooldown: 60 seconds Duration: 10 seconds Prerequisites: Momentum You enter a state of focus where your senses are heightened and time seems to slow. The strength of the effects is determined by your dexterity stat. Also, selecting this ability provides a one-time, permanent 1% bonus to Momentum.

Silent Step Class: Archer Type: Ability Cooldown: 3 hours Duration: 30 seconds Prerequisites: Silent Arrow For the duration of Silent Step, your actions do not produce audible noise. Note that this only applies to sounds you produce, like footsteps, equipment adjustments, and breathing. An object not on your person that is knocked over by accident, for example, will still produce noise.

Multi-Shot Class: Archer Type: Ability Cooldown: 30 seconds Duration: Instant Prerequisites: Dual Nocking, Swift Hands Nock 1 arrow and loose 3 arrows simultaneously and strike 3 different targets. Bonus arrows are temporary system duplicates of the first arrow. The quality of your accuracy for one arrow is replicated across the other two even though they do not share targets.

Some dex archer builds chose Flow State over Multi-Shot at this point, largely because of the bonus to Momentum, but each individual arrow from Multi-Shot counted toward Momentum as well. A permanent 1% boost was better for pure speed, but the guides that recommended Multi-Shot argued that increasing the volume of arrows in this case produced far greater returns and had better utility.

For what it's worth, Megan took Flow State for her level 8 unlock, and she would definitely get a big return on it because of her Machine Gun build. I shouldn't admit this, but one other facet of Multi-Shot that made it my pick over Flow State: shooting three arrows at a time at three different targets was cool as fuck. I put 2 stat points into constitution and then 1 into dexterity.

When I finished, I reloaded my system profile: Dorion Carmino Class: Archer Level: 8 XP Progress: 79/12800 Str: 7 Dex: 15 Con: 10 Int: 5 Cha: 3 Abilities: Piercing Shot Dual Nocking Multi-Shot Traits: Ranged Accuracy Improved Reload Sharpen Momentum Swift Hands Spells: (none) I was the luckiest crawler in the world to get the chance to level like this, and I was already impatient for level 9. The second day was less lucky than the first. All of our stops were D gates, and two were roach runs.

A satellite reading can't reveal what kind of dungeon is inside of a gate, so there was always the risk of drawing something unpleasant. No way around it, really. We skipped them entirely, thankfully. The third D gate that day was squids. We killed the slimes in the first stretch and camped in one of the side rooms for the night. We cleared it in the morning for another 1200 XP or so, hiked to another D gate for another 1000 and finished with a lycanthrope C gate.

Megan and I had been inside lycanthrope gates several times for harvest audits, but for me, I associated this kind of dungeon with the murder scene I helped clean up where a whole party of crawlers and a whole party of crashers died. The run itself was surprisingly similar to the gnolls. Instead of tall grass, the werewolves used the darkness of the forest for cover, but Dawit still clocked every one of them before they got to us. The boss of this dungeon was an "old blood werewolf."

Experts believe that suggests a process where the oldest werewolves, the ones closest to the original lycanthropes, were stronger than the later generations. That conclusion is all inference, though. For us, the werewolves appear all at once with the dungeon gate, so we have no real insight into what their true history is, if there is any. Multi-Shot, by the way, was as awesome as I expected it would be. The mental side of it took some getting used to, though.

The system doesn't have a crawler-facing targeting system, so you don't "select" the other two targets in any visible way. Instead, you have to fix all three targets in your mind at once, which is awkward to do when you're also trying to aim the first shot. But taking down three beakers with one draw? So slick. And it gets better. I could use Dual Nocking to load two arrows and then apply Multi-Shot on top of that.

The system considers two nocked arrows as 1 arrow in this situation for some reason, so the end result is six arrows flying at three targets, and they all have Piercing. I needed practice, but I could potentially get to the point where I killed four or five enemies from one draw. I came out of that lycanthrope gate with another 4000ish XP, which I was thrilled about until I saw Dawit's body language shift. He looked at his watch and then at the sky. The sun was setting.

"That run went long," he announced with resignation.

"It will be dark before we get back to the boat. We'll need to cover two miles or so when it's night." The other guides seemed more annoyed by that declaration than anything else. Seeing that they weren't afraid of the implications of traveling in the dark was comforting. Somewhat.

"Umm, sorry," Megan said, raising her voice slightly to be heard.

"I don't know if this matters or not, but that footprint isn't one of ours." Our whole group wore heavy-duty hiking boots, and the track Megan pointed to looked like it may have been from a slipper or a moccasin of some kind.

"No need to worry," Dawit replied.

"Okay, but isn't it weird that someone else is out here?" Megan asked.

"The natives get curious sometimes. They know better than to bother one of our groups, though."

"I thought this was unsettled land?"

"It is," Dawit said.

"These are small tribes of hunter-gatherers, likely descendants of people who didn't flee the continent when the gates opened. Come. We're wasting daylight." The jungle was near-deafening at night. Joining the natural collection of tropical bugs and critters were the noises of interdimensional invaders. Strange howls and roars echoed from the distance. Shrill yips went back and forth like two birds in different trees having a conversation, but these were closer to geese trying to bark like dogs.

The worst sound of all: the hissing of giant cockroaches. We heard them the whole way back to the beach, like a symphony of angry cats hiding in the dense foliage. They attacked us once, and I was so thankful to have two high-level defenders. Their Taunt abilities meant that they were covered, head to toe, in giant cockroaches when they did attack, and that's no exaggeration. I couldn't see the person beneath the bugs until we started killing roaches.

The boat that carried Nathan and Beth wasn't there when we arrived, which was a relief. They had gotten back on schedule. When the boat was clear of the beach, I finally relaxed. The water was calm, and only a few wispy clouds floated between me and a night sky filled with stars. I looked back at the rapidly receding coast. I spotted a glowing mass of fog. The light didn't illuminate anything around it, but the fog itself was a grayish blue and compact, no larger than a person.

It moved more swiftly than fog should. I tapped Dawit's shoulder and yelled over the engine.

"What's that?" He followed my finger point and yelled over the boat's motor.

"That's a wraith!" he answered matter-of-factly. I saw no signs of concern or fear about that observation. Having recently refreshed myself on what all a Wraith's Touch entailed, since the ghost salamander had a similar ability, I was very much concerned. When I caught Megan's eye, she mouthed, "What the fuck?"