Chapter 42: Pansies and Sons

So this is my ticket in? This is how they make it fair?”

The decision was harder than Sean was willing to admit. He had no real way of knowing how strong the front-runners in this competition were, but they had to be stronger than him. He had had... What? A week? That wasn’t enough to catch up, no matter what he killed. But he still had skills he hadn’t even had a chance to use, much less to master. This could give him a better chance to join the ranks of the best.

Not-Jeff was much less excited.

“Not quite that easy, Sean. Well, maybe that easy. Not quite that good.” From nowhere, Jeff had a cigarette. Fake Jeff smoked, because of course he did. The real Jeff had said that smoking for poor people was like foie gras for the rich. After dropping that nugget of confusing wisdom, he had refused to elaborate. “The challenge is gonna be something that even the Apocalypse System won’t be completely able to control.”

“But it’s possible I’ll survive it?”

“Sure. But it’s also possible it will belch out certain, instant death. And there’s no way to know, even for the Apocalypse System. Once you ask for this, a bunch of automatic stuff happens.” He took a drag off his cigarette. “The only reason it’s giving you this choice is that you aren’t supposed to exist. A late-comer rising to the occasion isn’t supposed to be a possibility at this point.”

“And the planet it would send me to if I wuss out? Is it a good place?”

Pseudo-Jeff shrugged. “No idea. It’s a place the main, non-apocalypse system thinks wouldn’t kill you in the first couple of days, at least. Beyond that, it would be up to you.”

Sean considered it. He thought he had been absolutely committed to saving the world or dying trying, but a lot of the almost-actually-dying parts of his recent life had shaken him a bit if he was being honest. And now, with a ticket out of dodge on the table, he could feel himself wavering a bit.

“Why the 24-hour time limit, then? Seems a bit needlessly rushed.”

“Not quite needlessly, but that’s a bit of a spoiler, and not something I can tell you about.” Jeff stubbed out his cigarette on the table. “For what it’s worth, you get the idea of what’s going on. You’ve seen what those cracks can spit out, and the stuff you would see inside of them would be endlessly worse. And, most important, you know that the Apocalypse System will let you out of it, if you want.”

Jeff put his hands on the table and stood up, his knees cracking just like they would have if it were really him.

“The rest you can figure out for yourself, but one last piece of advice. You’re about to get a lot of levels from what you just did. You really weren’t supposed to be able to kill that titan yet. That dragon cheated a little bit by telling you what he did. Not in a way the system could punish, but more than a contributed beast should have been able to.”

He walked over to the doorway to the room, and let his hand rest on the handle. “Don’t let it go to your head. All in all, there are about a thousand entrants who either have entered those cracks, or will soon. The average level among them is 35, which is a lot higher than it sounds for the pre-competition world.”

Turning the handle, he opened the door, walked through it, and began to close it behind him. Just before it latched, he stopped and turned around.

“Actually, I just checked the math. You can ask one last question if you want. Nothing important, no spoilers, but just something to clarify. Consider it a parting gift.”

Sean could think of a dozen questions that would be useful in a practical sense, from the best way to level his skills to examples of the kind of threats he’d face if he dove down that crack. But there was only one he really wanted to ask, when it came down to it, one that he actually thought would help him make the decision.

“What would Jeff say?” Sean asked. “If he was here. You have to know a lot about him to pretend to be him. What would he tell me to do?”

“Oh, huh.” The not-Jeff paused and thought. “Yeah, I can answer that. He had thought a lot about it, although it was more in terms of you quitting that job and going back to school. He’d tell you not to be a pansy.” Sean smiled. Jeff probably would have. “But he’d hope you wouldn’t go. The old man wouldn’t have said it, but there was a reason he sometimes called you son.”

—

Waking up was just as sudden as it had been in the system’s illusion room, but nowhere near as pleasant. Sean was buried. However much rubbish was above him, it was enough that he was cut off from light, and judging by how hard it was to breathe, he was cut off from outside air as well. He was underground, choking, and was pretty sure half his limbs were bent in ways they shouldn’t really bend.

He tried to laugh, choking on the thin air. After all that, he realized he should have probably asked how any part of the challenge was relevant to a guy who was likely about to die anyway.

He felt Stitch Up working, but he also felt it slowing down. Apparently whatever natural systems it amped up to make him heal faster were reliant on him being able to breathe to some extent. As the last oxygen molecules leeched into his bloodstream from the pocket of air around his head, he felt it grind to a stop.

And then things went black once more.

—

“I told you he was under there. The loot detector doesn’t lie.” Sean struggled to put a name to the voice. He knew he had heard it before, but he couldn’t quite open his eyes to see who it was.

“Well, I’ll be damned. I thought for sure it would be whatever the Titan had dropped.”

“Naw. Kill this big, he’s gonna get whatever prizes from a notification. It was either him or one of his weird weapons that did the thing in.”

Janey! It’s was Janey. Wait, no. She’s much more southern grandma.

“Now stand back, you leather working fart. I’m not carrying him with his leg looking like that.”

“How do you propose we fix it, you old witch?”

“Like this.”

Sean felt cold, boney hands on his leg. They suddenly yanked downwards, and his entire world dissolved in to bone-setting, tendon-straightening fire. Just before the pain knocked him out again, he realized who the voice belonged to. The trick to remembering, it turned out, was to imagine her talking about Plug Mud.

—

When Sean finally came to for real, it was to the smell of only-slightly-distant outhouses.

“Oh, look who’s up. Told you it wouldn’t be long now.” Brett offered Sean a hand up, which he took and used to pull himself into a sitting position. He was sore, but apparently had slept through the worst of the healing process. He moved to stand, only to feel a small hand slap against his chest and hold him back.

“Hold on there. Trust me. You want to give it a couple more minutes before you stand. You barely survived that. Sit a while. There’s no hurry.” Estesia had apparently recovered before him, which made sense. As big of a hit as she had taken, she hadn’t been suffocated by generations of accumulated waste.

“Okay, got it.” Sean said. “How long was I out for? And where’d my armor go?”

“We had to scrap your armor.” Brett said, pointing to a pile of ruined leather off to the side. “Though, we think we found all of your weapons. You were out for about ten hours after we pulled you from the trash, by the way. Gave me time to make this for you, sort of as thanks for not leading that thing back to the town. I hope you don’t mind me raiding your hides.”

Brett put down a big stack of armor by Sean, and motioned for him to examine them.

Bear Stalker Armor Set

The Bear Stalker Armor Set uses a combination of leathers from various forest animals to emphasize a bunch of qualities that make complete sense. From the bear, you get the benefit of further improved stealth in low-light conditions. From the mighty rabbit, you get extra strength. From the sloth, you get nothing. Brett didn’t end up using the sloth leather.

This set of armor is a journeyman piece, signifying it being the project that pushed a particular craftsman over the edge from intermediate to intermediate-high levels of skill. As the item that caused the craftsman to bust through a threshold to a new tier of skill and due to the rare or elite status of all the beasts that contributed materials to its production, it gains significantly better stats and perks that the same pattern won’t replicate when used in the future.

Effects: +2 STR, +2 VIT, +2 MAG, Improved low-light stealth, Improved resistance against magical attacks

“Wow, Brett.” The set was beautiful, despite being furry. “How did you get this done so quick?”

“I’m a crafting class. Ten hours is a long time for us.”

“Well, thank you. What do I owe you?” Sean was wearing the cleaner of his two sets of underclothes, and someone had bathed him while he was out. He decided he’d rather just go on not knowing who had done such a thing, but his cleanliness meant he had no qualms about starting to put the armor on as they talked.

“No charge. I’ve been trying to bust through to the next level for months. I almost panicked when I realized all the leather you brought was from elites. Had to think fast and try some new things to keep from botching the tanning. I think that did it.”

The new armor fit just as well as the old had, but felt noticeably more substantial in a way that went beyond the added stats.

“It’s really great. Thank you,” Sean said, absently scratching at the back of his head, where the knowledge of what felt like a whole pile of levels was gnawing at him. “Is the town pissed off at me? I sort of brought a giant death golem to their door.”

“Pissed? They’ll all buy you a drink later. You picked up your own mess. That’s the closest anybody gets to politeness around here.” Estesia laughed. “ Besides, that thing was level 50. Most people in town wouldn’t admit to being pissed at you, even if they really were. How did you know, anyway? Golems like that usually do have a weak spot, but I wouldn’t have guessed you had an analysis skill.”

“Just some advice from a friend.” If nobody brought up Cedarhelm, Sean certainly wasn’t going to spill the beans. “He had seen something like that before, I guess.”

“Well, good for him, but I’m going to bed,” Brett said, yawning. “That was a lot of work for one day. Take care of yourself on the way home, Sean. I don’t want to have to dig you out again.”

“I’m off too,” Estesia remarked. “By the way, I got some pretty good stuff from even being involved in that fight. I won’t ask what you get, but congratulations in advance.”

Sean nodded, and finally rose to his feet. Everything creaked, but the worst of the damage was already healed. Thanking both of the two people there again and resolving to do the same for the Plug Mud lady when he had the chance, he moved towards home. As bad as the temptation was to stop and handle his pile of notification windows right now, it would be better to do so where he could sit and think.

Unless he missed his guess, he had some serious levels to assign.