CWD: OE ~ Thirty

Two hours into their run, even Brie was showing signs of mentally wearing down. As Nacho tried to gauge the distance they still needed to cross, he felt his heart drop. He could still see the Pantry door rising up in the distance behind them. There was nothing but an open hallway stretching in front of them. At this rate, they might walk two days and still not reach the next room.

Brie screeched to a stop, Mr. Lacrosse Stick appearing in her hands. Taye pulled out his bow, prepping an arrow and searching around frantically. “Where is it? What is it? You’re nervous; that means the rest of us should be terrified, right?”

“Deep breaths, Taye.” Nacho, the only other person that was used to pushing the limit on his stats, knew why she’d stopped. The insectile chittering, the scratch of spiked legs rustling across the polished wood floor. “Roaches. There are cockroaches scuttling around us. Form up, and let me check something.”

“Where?” Kristie called, hunting for signs of movement around the massive, empty corridor that they were attempting to traverse. “Nacho, where? I hate those things.”

He didn’t answer, sliding under one of the nearby shelves and touching the polished baseboard. It felt solid, and whatever was on the other side of the wall never appeared. He pushed to his feet, shook his head in negation, and Brie marched forward, leading the way once more. She was considerably more alert, and by the way her fingers were gripping her weapon, the Berserker was ready for something, anything, to happen.

The roaches didn’t appear, apparently never finding a hole in the baseboards. Still, the noises and concern had given them something to talk about. Time marched on in keeping with their feet, and eventually, the majority of the team had begun hitting their mental limits for continuous running. Nacho couldn't help but feel dissatisfied, knowing that it was highly probable that the well-trained CruxTerran UltraSoldiers would be able to push much further than they had been able to manage.

Four hours of jogging turned into eight… turned into twelve. After a short deliberation, it was agreed that they should seek to be more well-rested and alert than the other team by the time they reached their final goal, so the cook reluctantly allowed a two-hour rest. All around him, members of the group flopped to the ground wherever they were standing, either lying flat or sitting with their backs braced against the wall.

Reuben yelled out in frustration. “Starvation Dungeon? More like the boredom dungeon! Yeah, we can’t eat. You know I eat when I’m bored, and I’m so abyssal bored.”

Brie didn’t respond. She simply laid down on her back, folded her hands across her chest, and closed her eyes. Mr. Lacrosse Stick lay next to her, ready to swing into action at the slightest provocation. With a fair amount of disgruntled muttering, Reuben laid down next to Brie, to comfort her if nothing else. Nacho watched them for a long, lingering moment, glad that his friends had good spouses in each other.

One incongruity stood out to the cook in the next moment: Jennifer was in the process of setting up her folding table and buying wood for a fire. Nacho strolled over and settled on the ground to watch her work. “Are you sure you don’t want to rest?”

“There’s no way I’m sleeping while we’re in a dungeon. Sounds like a good strategy to get dead real fast. Besides, I’m going to brew up another six-pack of my Mana Soda.” She poured a vial of liquid into the pot she’d hung over the fire. “I’m making the essential oils, then adding strawberries and lots of sugar, but I buy that. Normally, I mix the essential oils with my own water that I purify and carbonate with my Wand of Carbonation—a Rare magic item I got from a monster drop—but I’ll need to buy common Tier one sparkling water, since we’re in the dungeon. That means a bad aftertaste, and it goes flat in a few hours. But having the potion is what matters more than taste.”

Nacho was glad Reuben already seemed to be sleeping, or else he might’ve argued mightily against such a sacrilege. The Brewer’s pragmatic rationale just put a smile on his face. “I couldn’t agree with you more.”

“Someone needs to stay awake, and… is everyone else asleep? Has no one heard of a watch rotation? Also, I know you called a two hour break, but you may want to extend that to three. People sleep in hour and a half cycles, and getting two cycles of sleep might be more beneficial for everyone. Then again, that means we’ll only have nine hours to finish this dungeon before we start feeling the effects of starvation.”

“I’m… I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Nacho was hesitant at first, but he finished his statement strong. “I understand better than anyone what it means to hit starvation, and we all have enough in Fitness to go an entire day with no sleep. This rest stop is, to put it bluntly, to compensate for a lack of training and mental fortitude. So what if we are a little extra tired for a tiny slice of time? Literally every human life is at stake.”

“Even knowing that, you allowed a rest? I get it. You’re frustrated as a leader, but being a good one means that you work with the needs of your people.” Jennifer stirred her fruit and oils in the fizzing water, regarding him pensively. “I’ve always had enough to eat since we got to this world. Do you wanna give me a refresher on what happens if we don’t eat for a full day?”

“The Starvation Debuff is… deadly. It also works way, way faster than people seem to realize.” His tone grew dark, and his mind retreated to the not-so-distant past when he had observed literal hundreds of people dropping like flies, and the more recent occurrence when he had tried to sentence Zack to death by starvation. “You’re only required to eat once every twenty-four hours. If you miss that benchmark, you lose one Hunger Point every minute that you don’t eat, until you go negative. Negative Hunger Points mean that your Health Regen turns negative. From that point forward, you lose percentages of your Health, but… not for long. Ultimately, what that means is… if you’re at max health, it still only takes twenty-eight minutes.”

Nacho knew that number from experience. At a single negative Hunger Point, they would lose point two-five percent of their Health points. Minus two Hunger Points? Point five percent. At negative four, they lost the first full percentage point of Health, and each minute compounded that. To remove the debuff, not only did they need to eat, but they needed to eat until their Hunger Points were positive again. Sometimes, it just wasn’t possible to make that happen in time.

“Thirst works similarly, only that’s a Dehydration Debuff. If they don’t drink a full portion of liquid once a day, their Mana Regen turns negative. Run out of Mana, and you go unconscious. Can’t eat when you’re unconscious, and there’s no Juxtaposition equivalent of a feeding tube. Eventually, the Starvation Debuff kills you… wait.” Nacho stared at her in astonishment. “You know, with my new talent, I could eat and give people Hunger Points, even if they were unconscious.”

Jennifer shook her head. “Let’s not get that far, okay? We’re going to make sure we get to that Dining Room Table before Brie drops, because she and Taye used their Hunger Points, and they can’t get them back.”

“Great, they can be our canaries,” Nacho chuckled darkly. “If they go down, we move that much faster. Speaking of dropping, aren’t you tired?”

“I was in the army, then the reserves when I was working at the brewery,” Jennifer replied easily. “You learn early on how to embrace the suck. A lot of people have never been pushed to their real limits. I have, and I know how far I can push myself before I need rest, even if the stat points we get have been messing with that a little.”

“More like a lot.” Nacho’s grin settled into a more natural version as he considered the new information. “Every time you increase your characteristics, you need to push yourself to the limit to find what that limit actually is. Not a lot of people can do that, at least not over and over again.”

A few minutes passed in silence, only broken by the clacking sound of Jennifer tinkering with her liquids. Nacho hesitated awkwardly, then opted to walk off, calling softly over his shoulder, “Listen, I’m going to patrol; try and get some rest when you’re done.”

An uneventful few hours passed, feeling longer to the cook than the entirety of the time they’d been running. But finally, he roused the group by borrowing Jennifer's wooden spoon and banging it on his skillet. Everyone quickly gathered their things, and Jennifer packed away her brewing supplies.

Brie called to them from her self-appointed patrol as she waited for the others to be ready. “Hey! I think I found something.”

That got everyone moving, and they quickly hurried over to join her. When they reached the Berserker, they found her inspecting a jagged hole nibbled through the baseboard. The hole revealed a dim passageway between two stones, and… it looked promising, in terms of bypassing the expansive hallway and reaching the next area. The concerning part was that the hole was about five feet wide and ten feet high.

Nacho opened one of his pockets, summoning his Firefly Potstickers and sending them through the opening. Moments later, they observed that it wasn’t just a shallow cave, but a path too long to see the end of.

“Should we all check it out?” Taye stepped forward, ready to lead the charge. “Or maybe just send in a few people? I’ll go.”

Nacho reached back and fluidly pulled his skillet shield off his back. “We’re not dividing the party, not in a place like this. Let’s all go in. Brie, Abby, we’ll put you up front. Hazel, be ready with your shields for them. I’m hoping this goes where we need, or else we’ll have even less time to save the world.”

“Literally the world,” Reuben snorted as they shuffled into the hole. “We could just evacuate all the people into CruxTerra, if the CrossHumans weren’t so ready to try ‘long pork’.”

“There’s no way people would leave,” Brie commented wryly. “Look at Old Bill. He’s ready to fight another Bove head on if one threatens to knock over his shack.”

That got a few chuckles from the group, though they quickly lapsed into silence as they explored the strange cave system, climbing upward the entire time. It wasn’t too long before Nacho started worrying that they might have to turn back, but just as he opened his mouth to order a retreat, light gleamed up ahead. Brie pointed Mr. Lacrosse Stick at the near-daylight that was illuminating their path. “It ends up there, I think. I’ll go slow.”

“You’re darn tootin’ we’ll go slow,” Abby grumbled as her knuckles turned white from gripping her iron-shod weapon so tightly.

Brie reached the end of the passageway, and let out an involuntary gasp. “Nacho, front and center! I need you to see… this.”

Nacho slipped through his people and stepped out onto a ledge with Brie. His eyes adjusted rapidly, and his jaw dropped.

“For abyss’ sake, just tell us what it is!” Jennifer called from the back.

“It’s a kitchen.” Nacho breathed the statement so softly that he needed to repeat himself. “A massive kitchen, and it looks like things are really cookin’.”