CWD: OE ~ Seven

No matter how disappointed he was with how Zack had chosen to live, and the decisions that had led him to this point, the fact remained that he had made those choices. It was astounding how little time it took before the rumor mill convinced people to swarm into the guildhall, and Nacho was in the process of grilling steak to hurry that along. Soon, the people that didn’t follow their ears, followed their noses.

One of the Ghost Pepper Brigade had killed something called a Steer Clear, a huge blue cow with spiked front legs and huge shoulders with bone spurs. Steer Clear charged through forests, felling trees with the wide shoulder swords it grew. Usually they were left alone to roam, as they didn’t actively hunt people.

As a general rule… it was best to steer clear.

The beast was a level eleven monster—pretty tough for someone outside of Brunch Force—but the Ghost Pepper Brigade had come to Armor Mountain already at Tier one. One of the reasons why Nacho suggested that they go live in Jalapeno Town was that the initial party name they had was terrible: Gustav and Gary’s Good Guy Gang. He had wanted to see their true colors, and… well, now Kala had to deal with them.

The other reason was that he had originally thought that the GG’s team of warriors would keep Kala in check. Tha had backfired spectacularly, but in the best of ways. Both the Brigade and Kala now worked well together when it came to running the town.

Nacho processed the Steer Clear, cooked up a simple recipe of salt, pepper, and meat, and chopped up five pounds of the beef with a few heavy *whacks* of his cleaver. There was no need to be super fancy, which reminded him to try out his Feasting Feats Skill. “Basic knife usage gives me seven and a half pounds… if I’m doing the math right, using the skill boosts it to one hundred forty-two and a half pounds of the meat.”

The cook was given a System prompt to where to send the steak. It was surprisingly intuitive to choose a location out in the hall, so he set a point and walked out. It had only been a few minutes since he made the steak rare, but the hall was already packed near to bursting, although there was a clear empty area around Zack.

He had hoped that the man would come to see the situation before it was too late, perhaps apologize and try to make amends. Instead, when he got out into the feasting hall, the loudest voice was Zack’s  as he begged for help against the Tyrant that was trying to kill him. “I'm literally starving to death right now! He needs to be stopped, somebody get me something to eat, quick!”

“Nobody help him.” Even though Nacho had kept his voice calm, it thundered through the hall and stopped half a dozen people from trying to force feed the man that had attacked him. “I'm sure you are all wondering why I have gathered you here today. Zack, be quiet. You are only allowed to speak if I say something that is not true.”

The Berserker's teeth audibly *clicked* together as his jaw was forced shut. Nacho watched this hollowly, nodding slowly. “I think some people have forgotten the situation that we are in. The fact that the world as we knew it has ended. Perhaps you have  been able to convince yourself that you are safe, and you can revert to old habits. I'm here to tell you that if you have started to backslide, you are not going to make it.”

A hubbub filled the room at his words, and most of  what he was hearing was angry words  directed at him. “Today, I'm going to explain in a way that everyone can understand that actions have consequences. A short while ago, Zack Puck of the Final Victory Guild attempted to murder me. Because of that, under the terms of the guild contract he is bound by… he earned the Mark of Betrayal. If you look at his wrists, you can see what looks to be tattoos that should say ‘Oathbreaker’.”

Multiple people went and confirmed this, and the angry overtones turned into confused murmuring. Nacho let his fingers lazily glide upward to point at the rest of his arms. “Even after he started to burn for his crime,  he ignored the effects and continued attempting to kill me. That activated the second stage of the mark, which the patrons call ‘did the dumb’. I’m telling you all of this so that you understand what is happening.”

“What are you going to do to him?” Someone called out. “Throw him in prison?”

“We don't have one of those, and we don't need one.” Nacho  informed them solemnly. “There are only one of two things that can happen now, and I’ll leave that to Zack to decide. Zack, answer truthfully, was anything I said a lie?”

“Well… no. I did what I needed to—aah!” Zack screamed so hard that it went silent. He needed to heave a few breaths before he could manage to speak again. “What… what’s happening?”

“You’re unable to lie right now, Zack. That will only bring pain.” Nacho didn't speak directly to him, he spoke to the room at large as the black marks wriggled up Zacks’ neck. “There are no easy ways to punish people in this world. It is brutal, and there is no room for error. One person being selfish like this drags the rest of us down, and that leads us to death. While he was attacking me, I assessed his combat capabilities. As far as I can tell, he has not earned his way to his current Tier and level.  This means he has been extorting credits from other people and using them to make himself stronger. Zack, do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Although he was practically frothing at the mouth, he wisely chose not to lie and inflict more pain on himself. Nacho slowly nodded at that, then took a deep breath. “Then I judge you guilty. Your punishment is to stand there for the next thirty minutes.”

Nearly the whole room went pin drop silent, and Zack laughed as he scratched at the burning marks. “That’s it? All that build up, just to tell me to stay in time out… not even for a whole hour? Fine by me!”

“Yes.” The cook merely nodded at him with serious eyes. “Your Hunger is negative. It’s been thirteen minutes. I would say that you have anywhere from eight to twelve minutes until your negative Health Regeneration kills you.”

“W-what?” Zack blinked one eye, then the other, and shrugged, pulling up his character sheet. “I’m standing here, dying! You’re just going to… to let it happen?”

“I don't need to punish you, Zack.” Nacho  informed him gently. “ in fact, I don't need to do anything right now. frankly, it is a toss-up on what gets you first. The contract burnout, or starvation. I've seen both happen before, and I highly recommend quietly starving to death. Lighting on fire and burning from the inside out doesn't seem like a pleasant way to go.”

“You can’t do this! Save me! Someone, help! Nacho! You can save me, please save me.” Zack screamed at the crowd, who watched on with rapt, horrified attention. Since he had been ordered to stand in the same spot he was in, Zack couldn't even collapse to the ground to cry. Trying just made the black marks spread faster.

“I am sorry, Zack.” Nacho informed the man, who looked at the cook hopefully… only to be met with eyes as cold and sharp as the knives he wielded. “But that was the contract you signed, and that was your choice. It was your choice to think you could kill me with no repercussions, and to put actions to those thoughts. While everyone is free to think whatever they want to think… actions have  consequences.”

Just as Nacho finished stating that harsh reality, the black marks finished covering Zack’s skin. He grabbed at his abdomen, then crumpled in place as he was burned from the inside out. Nacho watched until the entirety of his body had turned to ash, which blew away as though wind had swept through. Where his body had lain was a pile of items that had fallen from his Storage Slots, and the words ‘Did the Dumb’  burned into the floor.

The room was silent, but Nacho knew that it would stay that way only so long. He had nothing more to add to the conversation, and before anything else… lunch needed to get underway. He still had plenty of the Steer Clear left, and with his Feasting Feats, one hundred pounds of beef was nearly three thousand. It was time to feed his guild.

The lunch rush was over before he knew it, though the story of what had happened brought people in time after time; doors banging open as people rushed in to look at the words burned into the floor. Brie even came to check up on him, but he sent her and Reuben away without being able to speak to them. Even though the man had earned his punishment, Nacho had been in charge of him.

The fact that the situation had dissolved that far was his fault, and his first major failing as a leader.

Nacho couldn’t let it get him down, even though he knew he would need to spend some time thinking about what he could do to ensure something like this never again happened in his guild. Frankly, he had plenty to be distracted by.

He had found a happy function of the Feasting Feats Skill: all he needed to do was make the food, then it could go to the five chosen locations within five hundred feet of the skill at the time of activation. That meant he could prepare the food, activate the skill, and walk away.

The people were able to take care of themselves, and everything moved more smoothly than it had in weeks, even with the confusion over the change. Nacho didn’t even care how much money he’d made. He’d been able to feed everyone in his guild without a personal interaction, which was very welcome after the morning he had just been through. Lunch had been complete for him as soon as the food was complete.

The wave of relief he was hit by was practically inconceivable: he had been able to buy back hours of his time for each day. As far as he was concerned, the Skill had already more than paid for itself. As he lay on the cold stone floor to cool down after the heat of his grills, he wondered how much money he’d need in order to make the Millet Meadows a safe and profitable hunting location. “Nah… they’re too sneaky. We just need to wipe them out before they can spread.”

With their food situation looking good, they needed to look into water. Early on, they’d bought a Tier zero water cistern. At the time, it had been fine, and cheap, but Nacho knew they had no choice but to start putting serious money behind their group survival needs. For him, Tier zero was only worthwhile to have around for showers, and to that end there was the bath and shower house to the west of the guildhall.

But there were quite a few people above Tier zero, and more reaching that watershed level every day, and they needed to drink the water.

The problem was, the Store was charging them two hundred and seventy thousand credits for the Tier one cistern, and the same amount for pipes and plumbing that would connect all the buildings to that water source. That was including their ten percent discount for building supplies since they were a guild, else that would’ve been a grand total of six hundred thousand credits… for water that would be less useful than air to him in a few weeks.

Nacho grimaced at that thought. There were problems at the top. Even if they were problems he could handle, they were problems nonetheless. He banged his head against the ground, unable to damage himself even slightly. “We need a big win. Getting a couple grand in credits from processing Millet Stalkers just isn’t doing much when we look at the bigger picture.”

He lay there with his eyes closed, taking deep breaths as tried to work through everything. Then the world went quiet, and still. His eyes popped open, and he froze when he saw a CrossHuman staring at him. Just before dashing at the cook, Arriodd spoke. “It’s us, or it’s you, Nacho. This is a zero-sum game, and I can guarantee you… we are not going to lose.”

Then Arriodd charged Nacho with his sword raised. That katana hit Nacho’s flesh… and bad things happened.

Nacho awoke with a scream, lashing out around him with his knives like a startled blender before going limp. He was covered in sweat, and his heart was hammering in his chest. What little breeze his kitchen had was gone, and the place had become an oven. “Mmkay. Need to fix the ventilation issues. Add it to the list of all the stuff that needs to be done.”

He checked the time, finding that it was only a little past three. He had a few minutes before they needed to start dinner, but only if he really wanted to do it. There was still food left over from lunch, and people had finally come around to the ‘eat once a day or as needed’ rule. No one got hungry anymore, not without using skills or failing to eat for a full twenty-four hours. Still… the Ghost Pepper Brigade had found a whole herd of Steer Clears, and had promised to bring back as many as possible.

The remainder of the last one they’d brought in had turned into goo and drained down Nacho’s sink. “Better to fill the freezer now, I suppose. Can’t believe I got an actual break today, that was awesome.”

Nacho got to work, and as the day progressed all of the issues that had been swirling in his mind started to be distilled down to the main problem: Mana. Specifically, the lack of it. During Active Cooking, he ran out of Mana constantly. That meant he needed to take large pauses when preparing his food if he wanted it to offer any kind of buffs.

Sure, he could eat and drink while he used his magic, but he had no way of refilling his Mana pool. They needed a Brewer, as Nacho was nearly certain that class would be able to generate homemade mana potions. “Why couldn't they just have named it something game-like? Alchemist, or something? I bet that would have been a class people fought to take.”

There was an easy answer to that: the Patrons didn’t want to make crafting classes obvious, or appealing. That line of thinking brought him directly to his almost-certainly-Patron-sent vision of Arriodd. Kronos was working to make it clear that they couldn’t just forget about the CrossHumans. They were a threat as much as their rival guilds in the area, and stagnation was death. Nacho had to keep on upgrading his and his friends’ classes so they could get to Tier two. “Gotta get to level twenty so I can unlock the special Tier two option of my Gravy Boots. Can’t forget to check that when possible.”

Other than a general want to do things, he was stumped on how to get there. That… was a relief, in some ways. “When there’s no right place to start, there’s also no wrong place to start.”

Nacho would enlist his friends in the decision-making process, and ignore everything except for how happy frying donuts for the next morning was going to make everyone involved.  Going over to the serving window, he called to the Brittanys, who were relaxing at a table in the main hall. “Hey, could you guys run and get Reuben and Brie? I need to talk with him.”

“Sure thing, boss-man! We’re on it!” Britt leapt to her feet and pulled Brittany after her. Nacho sat in a chair in his kitchen in the meantime, looking at his hands and noticing that they were still a little shaky. Zack's death, followed by his dream of Arriodd and the CrossWorld still troubled him.

During Nacho’s Probability Vision, very few people had survived the journey through the Portal to actually see what the CrossWorld was all about. Some thought that maybe it was a paradise over there, but Nacho couldn’t imagine that was the case. If the CrossWorld was so great, they would’ve stayed there. The simple fact was, the CrossHumans had come to the Earth’s Starter World to find basic sustenance; the real issue being the fact that they ate humans for breakfast every day they could get them.

“I’ll see what Reuben and Brie have to say, but… maybe the next logical step is to find out what’s on the other side of the Portal?” His head hung down as he took a few minutes of introspection to himself. He had no long-term plans. He was upgrading his class and skills, however slowly that took. “What is the final goal? To survive, but what else?”

What if the Juxtaposition actually was a zero-sum game between the Humans and CrossHumans? If there could only be one winner…

“We can’t let them win.” Nacho’s eyes blazed as his will solidified around that single thought. “Humans need to go on the offensive, and hit the CrossHumans before they can get their act together. We’re going through that portal.”