Chapter 95: Illusion of Safety

It was too good of a day, honestly. We gained too much. And even though the system didn’t retaliate for that, I still had a feeling that things were going to go south.

People knock on wood for a reason. They throw salt over their shoulders and follow other superstitions because of something very real, very dangerous, and very ancient that chases us all. Sure, the system has a lot of power, and sometimes it hurts people. But it isn’t the only player in the bad luck game.

I forget about plain old fate, sometimes. Sean’s doing well, sure. Better than the system probably planned. I just have a feeling that there’s a debt he’s going to have to pay some day, somehow. And I’m thinking that day is close.

The Big Book of Brett, Page 104

—

“What about these?” Sean asked, cradling the trimmings from the robot plates in his hands. “These little fragments of robot metal don’t seem useful enough to keep.”

“Recycle them,” Brett said. “Can’t have enough garbage.”

Sean crossed the room and dumped them into the bin, which immediately consumed them.

“I think I’m going to hit the showers and sleep now. It’s been a long…”

Sean paused as another notification from the system hit.

Recycling Bin Improvement Attained!

You know what happens when you feed a magic recycling machine some metal that produces its own energy? Good things, apparently. The recycling bin no longer consumes energy when producing the lowest possible grade of garbage. Think “human residential kitchen trash” and you’ve just about got it.

All energy introduced to the recycling bin, on the other hand, is now dedicated to the generation of garbage in all the tiers above that. Good job! You have slightly more garbage. Out of courtesy, we aren’t going to ask what you are doing with all of it.

Sean relayed the information to Brett.

“Well, that’s good, I guess.”

“Better than you think, Sean. I can do stuff with that. Unlimited materials of any kind opens the door to some silly stuff. I don’t think the system is thinking far enough ahead on this one.”

Brett crossed over to the door and opened it, shouldering the small pack he usually carried for shopping as he did. “I’m going to go buy some containers. Barrels, things like that. Don’t wait up.”

Sean didn’t need to be asked twice. He went and laid down, looking forward to more dungeons the next day. One had to keep ahead of the Joneses, so to speak, and this had been the best way of doing it he had encountered so far.

At the last second, he decided to down one of his sleep-enhancing potions. It was a stupid waste in some ways, but he was beginning to see the value of good, real rest. After that, he’d get up, eat some good food, and just walk around for a bit so he could hit the dungeons fresh.

It didn’t take long to fall asleep after that. It had been a long day.

—

Brett still wasn’t back when he woke up, which was troubling. His increased VIT meant he didn’t need much sleep, and the potion meant he needed even less. If a couple of hours wasn’t enough for Brett to get barrels, it meant something else had happened. Inside the city, that wasn’t likely to be all that bad, but it still justified a bit of worry on Sean’s side.

Jumping out of bed, he pocketed a couple potions just in case, checked over his weapons, and hit the road. He had at least some idea of where Brett shopped, and there was a sort of sundries shop that probably carried the kind of containers he was looking for. He’d stop there, first.

“Brett? Yeah, I saw him. He bought all that.” The shopkeeper waved his hand disinterestedly at a pile of various containers heaped up in the corner. “He said he was heading to the smith’s next.”

Sean couldn’t imagine the checked-out shop attendant he had just talked to taking up Brett’s time for conversation, even if he liked Brett better than he liked Sean. The blacksmith was more talkative, though. He might still be there, if they had gotten pretty deep in comparing crafter notes.

Or at least he was telling himself that. The sour feeling in his stomach was telling him something much different.

“Sean!” the red-skinned smith said, a look of mild surprise on her face. “You forget something?”

“What do you mean?” he said. “I’m looking for Brett.”

“You lost him that quick?” she said. “I guess those materials weren’t as interesting as you thought, huh?”

Sean leaned over the counter, looking a bit crazier than usual judging by how the girl pulled back cautiously from him.

“What are you talking about? I wasn’t in here today.” Sean made hard eye contact with the smith, who looked more worried. “Something is going on. I need you to tell me exactly what you think happened. Quickly. Now.”

“I… I was just talking to Brett. You came in and said you had some sort of crazy quest reward, some pile of materials you couldn’t move for some system reason. And that you needed Brett to come with you and Spike to build something with it.”

“And then?”

“And then you left! I didn’t get anything more than that, Sean. I swear. It wasn’t that long ago, though! I think…”

Sean wasn’t listening anymore. He was already running. Someone was pretending to be him. There were only a few reasons they might want to do that. The first was to get information. He didn’t care that much about that, honestly. Brett was pretty smart. He’d catch on if the person was pretending to not know a lot of things Sean should already know.

If that was the case, they’d probably be in the village somewhere. But an unmovable pile of materials sounded like an outside-the-city type of thing. And there was only one reason anyone would try to lure Brett out there.

Come on, Spike. Keep him safe until I get there.

Sean sprinted out of the village for all he was worth, hoping he picked the right direction. He didn’t. He could see pretty damn far, and there was no Brett or Spike to be seen. He hugged the border of the city closely, watching to his left as he cleared more and more buildings and brought more of the surrounding fake countryside into view.

Finally, he saw them. All of them. Spike and Brett were walking along with an exact duplicate of him, identical down to the smallest detail. And from the looks of it, they didn’t suspect anything was wrong at all. He kept his mouth shut as he ran, hoping to god the Sean-copy of wouldn’t see him before he got close.

His hope didn’t pan out. As he closed the large gap between them, the Sean-copy heard something, turned, and saw him, freezing in its tracks as it did. Sean started yelling as the illusion covering the copy of him started to melt away, desperately trying to alert Brett and Spike to what was going on.

Before they could react, the copy pulled two shining knives, leapt through the air, and landed on Spike. His spear was tucked away on his back, and for all its advantages, wasn’t a weapon that could be drawn very quickly. The knives flashed several times, quickly. In the jumble, Sean couldn’t see what was happening very well, but he saw Spike falling to the ground clearly enough to know the badly bloodied man probably wasn’t getting up.

The figure turned from Spike to Brett, who had begun running towards the real, actual Sean without hesitation when the assassin had been occupied. But he was slow, far too slow with his non-combat-efficient stats.

Sean dumped every bit of his time-manipulation into slowing down the assassin as he sprinted. He pumped every relevant skill and stat point he had into speed as he ran forward, moving faster than he ever had in his life, so fast the wind was drying his eyeballs as he ran.

It wasn’t enough. He was a few strides from Brett when the man’s face suddenly twisted into a mask of agony for a split second before slacking as he pitched forward onto the ground. In an agonizing moment, Sean realized that his SAV stat was telling him something he didn’t want to accept but couldn’t deny.

Savvy was pretty good at assessing battlefield conditions, especially when combined with his over-leveled combat skill. And it knew, without a doubt, that one of Sean’s team members in this fight was gone. Not hurt. Not crippled. Eliminated from the field of play entirely. Dead. A glance at Spike told Sean the same thing. He was gone. They were both gone.

And just beyond his crumpled corpse was a grinning blond man. One of Eike’s people, one that Sean had seen around the village. One that was standing over the dead bodies of his friends, grinning smugly while already beginning to back away.

“I bet you wish you had done what Eike said now, you earthling garbage,” the man said. “He wanted you to know that…”

Sean was already on him. The man’s daggers flew up defensively as they barely deflected the Mystereamer from the center of his throat, but not enough that it didn’t take a big chunk of his neck in the bargain. Sean attacked again and again, trying his hardest to keep the bastard on the back foot for as long as possible before a counterattack came.

The counterattack never materialized. As Sean stabbed again and again, the cuts began to add up in a way he could see as his enemy slowed down, burned, froze, was poisoned, and generally took on damage faster than the man could mitigate it. Every moment of his enemy’s focus was eaten up just trying to minimize what Sean was doing to him, with no time left for his own offensive.

I’m stronger than him. Much stronger. Sean thought. He should have thought of that before… before this.

The assassin’s body glowed as he activated some kind of escape skill and blinked off into the distance. One of Sean’s Hard Time charges refilled just in time, letting him slow down the wounded man enough to keep him outside the borders of the town as Sean downed him with a single, well aimed knife throw to his thigh. He pulled the trash compactor out of his belt as he approached, ready to end the fight.

“Don’t.” Sean heard a booming voice from just inside the town, and looked to see a group of Eike’s people sprinting towards him. No Eike, though. The bastard apparently couldn’t be bothered to even watch his knife-man kill Sean’s friends. Sean didn’t hesitate. He brought the Trash Compactor up and over on a wide, looping arc, bringing it down on the back of the man’s head with a satisfyingly wet thwunking noise.

And then he was running. As weak as this assassin had been, he had no idea how strong the group coming at him was. He looped back to Spike’s corpse, picking up his spear and pack as he passed. He picked up Brett’s pack, as well, stopping only momentarily to confirm he had no pulse at all.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry about this, Brett. And I’m sorry I can’t bury you, Sean thought as he sprinted away. I swear to you, I’ll make them pay for this. And I won’t let them bury their dead either.