CWD: OE ~ Five

Nacho couldn’t get many specifics about the situation from the others. All three said it was a ‘see for yourself’ situation, and were hesitant to share too many details. Nacho pushed, but Brie eventually told him to drop it. “Why? Why can’t I just know ahead of time?”

“We don’t want to push you one way or the other. We want you to make your own decision.” Abby told him in an attempt to soothe his troubled mind.

The cook wasn’t enjoying the deflections. “At this point I’m thinking that I’m going to need to be ready to fight. Is that better?”

They could only shrug helplessly, and all too soon it was time for them to part ways. Taye, Kristie, and Abby needed to get back to the Bove’s Lair, but had detoured in order to seek out the missing chef. There were reports of a new dungeon, as well as hints that the CrossWorld Portal had been found, and they had been tasked with checking it out.

“Shoot, I forgot that we need to be clearly marking the path back to the Millet Meadow.” Nacho put action to words, and started slicing lines into the trees as they walked to make sure they could come back and clean the place out with a large group of volunteers looking to earn credits. “We’re gonna get their best warriors in there, kill those plants, and process millet until I’ve milked every credit out of these monsters.”

As he went to cut into a tree, he found a small surprise. A face popped out of the underbrush, and Nacho barely kept himself from throwing a knife into it. Then he recognized the green-colored fur and markings. “You… the plant-dog hybrid. You’ve gotten big, are you hostile yet?”

In reply, the sad-faced dog rolled over and showed him a green belly in a sign of submission. Nacho narrowed his eyes and glared, “I don’t believe you. There aren’t any monsters out there that aren’t hostile. Not without a skill to tame them.”

“Who are you talking to, Nacho?” Brie ran over when she saw his defensive posture, ready to take the fight to whoever was coming after them. Then she saw the dog and froze in place. “Is that the green dog? The one that loves you? I haven’t seen that since we rescued you from Crave!”

“No.” Nacho firmly replied. “That is a green monster that looks like a dog.”

Reuben came over to join in the conversation, and tapped on his chin as he heard their words. “Easy way to check… here, pooch.”

The dog looked from Nacho to Reuben, clearly nervous. It rolled to its feet and slowly crawled over, its vine-like tail wagging uncertainly. Reuben kept his hand out, and slowly scratched the dog behind the ear, and both of them slowly relaxed. “You know what’s going on with this little fella, Nacho?”

“Yes. It’s been following me practically since the Juxtaposition began.” Nacho stated harshly, not taking his eyes off the creature for a moment. “It’s been waiting for the right moment to strike, I’m sure of it.”

“Any reason you think that way, beyond it being a wild creature?” Brie wondered, even as she also scratched the dog. It leaned into her, and a happy smile took over her face. “I can’t believe I never realized how much I miss dogs.”

“A mental attack?” Knives spun into Nacho’s hands as he looked at the dog warily. “Do you feel a compulsion to take it back to base? To do what it wants? Is it in your head?”

“Course not.” Reuben scoffed, patting the dog and stepping away. “We’d never risk our people, no matter how cute this little gal is. Would we? No we wouldn’t.”

“See? You’re losing your mental faculties! You’re acting like a child!” Nacho raised his cleaver and stepped forward to put an end to this threat once and for all, only to be blocked by Brie.

“That’s baby talk, and something people did even before the world ended.” The Berserker stared at him coldly. “I’m not going to stand by and watch you kill a non-hostile dog.”

“It’s a Tier one monster at this point!” Nacho pointed his knife at the beast, which even the System View couldn’t identify. All it gave him was question marks for its name, level, and Tier. “When are we going to take it seriously? When it hits Tier two and goes on a rampage? I knew I should have taken care of this before you ever got involved.”

The dog scampered backward into the underbrush with a whine as it saw the naked hostility in Nacho’s face. In moments, it had vanished. No matter how carefully he searched, he couldn’t find it again. “Great. Just great. Now there’s a stealth-specialized Tier one monster hunting me, which can seemingly find me no matter where I go.”

Reuben looked at Brie, spinning his index finger around his temple. “Something tells me the paranoia is getting to you, man. That thing clearly only wanted to be your friend. Maybe it’s a type that can be domesticated.”

“I’m not letting it get away next time.” Nacho promised them, only to get shaking heads and hints of anger in reply. He grumbled at that fact, feeling put-upon. “My paranoia is what’s kept us alive this long.”

They got back to walking in a now-awkward silence. He didn’t mind: he knew that he was in the right. But for now, Nacho wanted to get back to his people, figure out the problem, and make some definite decisions about what to do next. Not counting the green dog—even though he wanted to—they had three big issues: the CrossWorld Portal and CrossHumans, the possible trouble with the other guilds, and finally whatever was happening at the guild.

The three of them crossed the distance back to Armor Mountain as rapidly as possible, managing to walk it in just shy of six hours. With their stats, that meant that they had just been nearly fifty miles from home. They approached from the north, which meant they would have to walk through one of their new settlements: the Tortilla Flats.

That was the town on the northern slope of the hill that made Armor Mountain; in fact one of its ‘walls’ was the sheer face of the ‘mountain’. It had been fairly well wooded, but many of the trees had been knocked down to make way for tents and houses. They’d named the northern wall the ‘Tortilla Shell’, and while the original northern ramparts of the core guild area were still there, they’d added a gate. They’d hacked the system by combining fortifications with apartments, just like the main area of the guild had done with the Great Wall Apartments on the eastern limestone cliffs of the mountain.

The Tortilla Shell was pretty impressive, even if no one would ever know if they didn’t see the inner workings. Beyond the arrow slits were apartments where the remnants of the Final Victory Guild had come to live, along with some other people who could tolerate Zack Puck’s leadership style. While the Chips guild had won the guild through killing the previous leader and being handed the remainder from the bet that Crave had made against the System, Nacho had foolishly allowed himself to be swayed into allowing them to self-govern themselves, which had translated to Zack now having a say in the big decisions the guild at large made.

Normally that wouldn’t be a terrible issue, but it turned out that Zack was not a nice or reasonable person. He was more a ‘collect skull trophies of your enemies for decor’ type of man.

Zack himself stood by the drawbridge as it was lowered over the trench they’d dug in front of the Tortilla Shell. “Ay, Na-chode! Ha, just kiddin’ bud. Know what I realized? We need a crazy moat, man. With alligators and stuff in it. Didja know we can buy alligators from the Store? I checked. It would be awesome.”

Nacho pulled at the shoulder straps of his gigantic mobile kitchen backpack, tightening it so that he wouldn’t be tempted to take a swing at the eminently punchable person in front of him. Pots swayed. Pans clanked. Zack watched all of this with a sneer, and a dark look in his eye.

The man himself was tall, beefy, with jet-black hair and dark brown eyes. If you brought Laston to life from the Beast and the Beauty movie, you’d have to insert about fifty percent more narcissism and gym-bro to accurately capture the man that was now able to influence the decisions of the council.

Reuben stepped in before his lovely wife could say what was about to pop out of her mouth. Brie loathed Zack. Although both were Berserkers, all similarities ended there. “You know, Zack, if you want to buy the Moat Alligator Info Pack and study up, no one here would stop you. If you want to finance your alligator moat with Tortilla Flat money, that might be great. We’re not the sort of people to shoot down your ideas.”

Brie tapped her weapon on the drawbridge. “How are you going to ensure the alligators stay in the trench? How do you stop them from attacking people like us who come walking up?”

“I’d just reason with them, pretty lady. Like any other beast, they’ll follow their alpha.” Zack exhaled as though explaining himself was a personal trial. He snapped his fingers, and Nacho could practically see the candle light up above his head as an idea struck. “Or I’d give them meat! Like, feed them in the same places, so they would stay around. Maybe I could train them to not attack the people I like.”

“Reuben had a great idea. The Alligator Training Info Pack might give you the solution.” Nacho walked past him. “Perhaps run it by Kala and see what she has to say.”

“Kala?” Zack somehow figured out how to inject his laughter with sneering. “I know we’re supposed to be something like co-leaders, but it’s never going to happen. I mean… look at me. This is who people want to follow, for all sorts of reasons. Ladies.”

Brie let out a disgusted grunt as he winked at them.

Zack wasn’t the best leader, but oddly enough he wasn’t even the worst in the guild. Kala over in Jalapeno Town should have earned that distinction. There had been… complaints. It didn't help that the people following Kala had made a game of pushing her buttons, though Iron Becky had been trying to explain to her that beating people into submission wasn’t the best way to lead them down the path you wanted them to follow.

Kala just wasn’t getting it.

Becky had come into the Juxtaposition with a counseling skill, and she’d freely spent credits to level it. The higher her counseling level, the healthier she could help someone become—if they wanted to get there. For Kala and Zack, she’d had to buy her way to Tier one, so she could max it out at level nineteen. Even then, the pair pushed Iron Becky’s abilities to their limits.

Which did beg the question: were there limits to how many Tiers they could climb? Were the Patrons just players who had advanced to Tier ten, or were they something else entirely? Nacho didn’t have the answer, and there was nothing he’d ever read in the Store, nor any rumor, that gave him that answer. For all they knew, the Patrons were bored interdimensional beings looking for a good time by playing games of chance and genocide.

“I heard there was a problem? Where do I need to go?” Nacho didn’t like that he needed to directly engage with this guy, but he had answers.

“Guildhall, bud. But listen, we need to talk about upgrading the cistern and doing some stuff with the water system in Tortilla Flats. You said when you had enough money, we’d figure it out. Becky said it could wait, but I say it can’t. We all know she’s just trying to play mind games.”

Brie decided not to stick around, and stomped off. The sheer fact that she could do that without causing some kind of political incident left Nacho feeling jealous down to his bones. Reuben stayed with Nacho, and he appreciated the support.

The cook grit his teeth into a facsimile of a smile and reached out to pat Zack’s arm. It was like patting skin stretched over concrete which had been oiled to glisten in the sun. “Yeah, Zack, I hear you. Look, I’m kinda tired. Let me get settled, then we can work on your water issues.”

“A moat is full of water. Just sayin’, water in a cistern, water in a moat… think about it!” Zack wasn’t going to just let the Guild Laster walk away. He followed along and went on a rant about the tents, how he needed to get to Tier two faster than anyone else, and lastly raved about a new dungeon that someone had found called the ‘Grotto of Grunt’. They hadn’t been able to figure out what was making the grunting sound, but it sounded pretty intense. Then the man said something that caught Nacho’s attention fully.

“Apparently there’s a bonus for running the dungeon without speaking or making any loud sounds. Everyone who tried failed because it was tricky to fight silently.” Zack shook his head and laughed bitterly, “People are so bad at fighting that they have to call out their attacks or something? Weak sauce.”

“Reuben. Dungeons that are offering clear challenges are appearing.” Nacho tried to tamp his excitement down. He had been waiting for this, knowing that it was likely that the advanced timeline meant they’d start appearing sooner than in his Probability Vision. This was a good thing, and also something that made him nervous. The challenges were designed to make it harder to survive the dungeon, but in return created impressive rewards if the clear conditions were met. “That’s a hallmark of dungeons that will start offering not-yet-available skills as a reward for success.”

“Got it, boss man.” Their conversation was so quiet that Zack didn’t even notice as he continued prattling on the entire time.

Many of the Final Victory’s people lived in the Tortilla Shell apartments, but a healthy portion stayed in tents. That had been fine over these last few summer months, but with fall—and the one year anniversary of the arrival of the Juxtaposition—coming all too soon, the guild wanted to transition everyone to live in more permanent structures. That required credits, planning, and a frankly ridiculous amount of water.

Nacho was itching to finish the Market Apartments on the Main Street, but that was just one of many construction projects. For instance, Old Bill was working on getting a blacksmith going, since he hated spending money at the Store. Matt Martinez was setting up a farming site on the southern end of the plateau, south of the guildhall. They hadn’t found someone with a Farmer class yet, but they had decided to get everything ready on the off chance they did, just so they could entice them with an area all set and ready to go.

The Tortilla Flats also had a few structures built, beyond just the walls. In the middle of the tent city was a guildhall that included an auxiliary kitchen, an oven, some stoves, and a sink. Nacho cooked there only under duress, as he much preferred using his main kitchen connected to the Armor Mountain guildhall, and then sending the food down. For that, Matt let him use a cart pulled by an old man that was too fussy to be trained in on the main Human Treadmills that went to the Bove’s lair and back.

Eyeballing the distance, Nacho had to concede that there was no part of the Tortilla Flats that was within five hundred feet of his main kitchen. If it was, Nacho could set a ‘vending’ point to get food over to Zack and his people, and never need to show his face here again.

He could only mumble hopefully, “Maybe when the skill hits Tier two?”