CWD: GA ~ Forty-Three

Nacho was itching to leave as soon as possible. It was still afternoon, and ideally, they’d be able to kill the Bove before nightfall. Most of the settlers had already rifled through their ruined tents in an attempt to salvage their gear, and many would be moving into the guildhall now that they were members and felt comfortable doing so.

Brie had scared the Bove, and Nacho loved how it had retreated post haste. Even so, the fight had only just started. He made his way to Reuben’s side and addressed the murmuring crowd. “Hey, everyone, thanks for joining the Chips—we’re glad that we were able to drive off the Bove, but the three of us have to go after it immediately. No one but Brie is going to be able to hurt the thing, and I don’t want to risk anyone’s lives but our own. We will be back as soon as possible. Can anyone help organize things while we are gone?”

At that moment, Iron Becky and Colleen pushed their way through the crowd to hug Mayor Dan, tears streaming down their faces as they sobbed in horror at nearly losing him. The display brought renewed chattering from the crowd about the attack. Reuben turned to his friend and noticed the dried blood on Nacho’s forehead. “Dude, you’re hurt? Let me heal you.”

“Nah, already done. Health Regen is amazing.” Nacho let the big guy hug him anyway, but he was adamant about moving out immediately afterward. “Reuben, we’ve got to grab our traveling gear and go; we need to strike the Bove as soon as possible. You’ll have to tank the damage while Brie slaps around our big beefy friend.”

“As long as you provide snacks,” Reuben deadpanned as he gave Nacho his full attention. “I am not risking my life without snacks.”

“That’s a deal.” Nacho didn’t mention he could also hurt the Bove, but the minor damage he could do with the HungerCry knives wasn’t going to amount to much. At some point, he would get some armor, but for the time being, he planned to stick to a supporting role. His primary job was to keep his players fed, and that meant he had to be light on his feet.

Mayor Dan was suddenly hugging Nacho, and being hugged so he could be healed was entirely different than being hugged gratefully by a Midwestern mayor. The older man teemed with gratitude. “Son, you saved my life. Young Bill, everyone, did you see that? Did you see Nacho risk his life to save me? I’m a politician. Most of the time, people would rather see me get hurt than step up like this! I knew we put our trust in the right man.”

Nacho awkwardly disentangled himself and settled the man back. “Mayor Dan, if I let you die, I’d never hear the end of it. For one thing, your wife would kill me herself. For another? If anything happens to me… you’re next in line for Guild Leader.”

“Hey!” Reuben complained.

“You don’t want the job anyway.” Nacho waved his friend away, then turned back to the mayor. “We’re going after the cow. While we’re gone, you’re going to get everyone out of the dungeon—I think Taye and some people are still down there. You’ve gotta stay on high alert until we’re back. We’ve seen Red Suzy Blacke lurking around, and it would be just like Crave to come after you while we’re busy hunting the monster. You need to protect the guildhall, but each other even more so.”

Nacho didn’t mention that even if they could kill the Bove, it was pretty much guaranteed that their list of enemies wouldn’t grow any shorter. Thankfully, the mayor agreed, and in no time, The Dinner Party was climbing down the repaired rope ladder with their backpacks strapped on tightly. Nacho hadn’t acquired his grand traveling kitchen yet, but he did make a point to lash some pots, pans, and a few plastic containers of spices and essentials onto his gear.

They’d come up with a rough sheath for Brie’s hammer so she could have easy access while carrying their bow as they hiked in the open, and Nacho began idly thinking they might just have to either invest in an archery Skill for Brie or find an option for a ranged Berserker attack. Brie turned her face slightly so they could hear her from her position at the front of the group. “I would like a Berserker Skill that allows me to do damage without running. I feel lame having to run back and forth while I fight. You’re thinking of a ranged weapon, aren’t you?”

“I am,” Nacho informed her agreeably.

“We could invite Taye into The Dinner Party,” Reuben suggested, then nudged Nacho. “Or Colleen; she seems like she’d really enjoy getting closer to one of us.”

Nacho had considered Taye and decided to focus on that portion of the conversation. “If Crave does hit Armor Mountain while we’re gone, they’ll need Taye. Other than Brie, he’s our best Body Player and can do the most damage, especially after we started leveling up his Skills. His Eagle Aim and Fast Quiver are downright impressive once he gets going.”

He kept them on the trail of the Bove, which was easy enough to do after finding its wide trail through the downed trees. It was about an hour later when they started encountering the people the Bove had killed, or what remained of them. A boot here. A shirt there. A woman’s gnawed-on dress.

Reuben took that one pretty hard. “Is anyone else worried about our little kingdom back on Armor Mountain? We’re sure the Bove has gone this way, and it isn't going to try to double back and take them out while we are busy hunting it?”

“It went this way, all right.” Brie pointed to a fresh pile of steaming manure that wasn’t just thrice-digested grass. Nacho refused to linger on what else might be lurking in that demonic cow patty.

Reuben hurried them past the nauseating mess. “Well, that was awful.”

“What if we can’t get to the Bove before it retreats into its lair?” Brie quietly wondered aloud.

Reuben responded by growling, “We’ll kill it in there. We are not letting this thing hurt any more people.”

It was clear that the affable man was shocked and infuriated at the monster cow’s path of destruction. Nacho tried to lighten the mood. “Too true! Because, you know, the more people this thing kills… the fewer customers we’ll have.”

No one laughed.

They started moving more cautiously as all natural sounds suddenly ended. The birds stopped singing, the skittering of small animals in the undergrowth abruptly cut off, and even the wind died down. They were peering around trying to find the new threat when Nacho sniffed the air and scented a fire in the distance. Moving to the ridgeline, he glimpsed a trail of fire flashing in the southern part of the forest. If there were flaming arrows, then Red Suzy Blacke couldn’t be far behind.

Nacho informed his friends about his suspicions, and they kept their eyes open as they raced along through the remains of the day. The trio journeyed fast, keeping an eye out for both Crave’s people and the bovine monstrosity. They didn’t want to get ambushed again, and the Bove was unnaturally fast. Fortunately, Nacho and his friends didn’t encounter any more monsters.

It seemed that all the other creatures had scattered in the wake of the first truly terrible monster to terrorize the countryside of the AKC. There would be others, some migrating from other places, burrowing up from the ground, and still more emerging from the darkest depths of the various dungeons around—the deeper the players went, the more Putrid Mana filled the air. Most people in the Juxtaposition thought that the deep denizens started at higher tiers than those monsters closer to the surface, but no one had ever managed to confirm it.

Twilight was setting in when Nacho finally came around to the idea that they were not going to be able to catch up to the Bove before full nightfall. It was equally clear that the beast wouldn’t be stopping until it reached his lair. As the sun painted both sky and forest in various shades of red, Nacho stopped his friends and sighed in resignation. “Well, according to Reuben, there’s no retreat and no surrender.”

“Let’s just go a bit farther.” Reuben pointed to a nearby rise. “Even if we don't find anything, we can camp up there.”

By the time they crested the top of the ridge, the stars were already coming out. Nacho, Brie, and Reuben found themselves in the ruins of a settlement, where shredded tents flapped on broken tree branches. The Dinner Party silently agreed to move off the hill and settled on camping near a thicket of bushes growing between a cluster of trees just out of sight of the obliterated encampment.

They cleared away the brush and started a fire, keeping their flank protected. Once the outer coals reached the right temperature, Nacho pulled out his pan and made pancakes for dinner. Truthfully, he couldn’t help but be proud of his creation. He’d come a long way since those first few blackened bits of yuck, and Reuben ate half a dozen without needing to stop between every bite and suck down water. They even had plenty of credits available for syrup, and when they were full, Nacho even remembered to tell them about his recent visit from Kronos.

Reuben rumbled with dark humor. “Your pancakes are so much better without the stick pieces, though I do miss the blackened crust. Blackened pancakes are like blackened shrimp, right? A delicacy?”

“No.” Brie curtly changed subjects. “You actually saw your Patron?”

“I did. In the kitchen of the Chaos Coop, no less. It was…strange. He said it was against the rules to talk to me, and he didn’t tell me much, except that there seemed to be two sides among the Patrons—those who seemed to care about humans, and those who didn’t. I’m pretty sure Kronos is in our corner, but it’s hard to say for sure.”

“It’s interesting that he’s still around.” Brie used the side of her fork to scoop every bit of pancake and syrup off her plate. It absorbed her entire focus, like she was performing surgery, and it was only then that Nacho realized how utterly exhausted she was.

“He wanted to make sure I didn’t give up on… you know, my life, the game, the whole thing. For a while there, I thought you two were dead.” Needing to keep his hands busy, Nacho poured some water into the pan. He had brought a little soap as well, and he idly swished the suds around the pan as it warmed the water. Doing dishes while camping was a pain, but it wasn’t impossible.

Reuben raised a hand with a grin. “Not dead! Not even close.”

“Let’s keep it that way.” Nacho hummed softly as he scrubbed. “Losing you two… made me a much worse person.”

“Some of the Patrons are good, and some are bad; does it matter which is which?” She stood up abruptly and moved off into the darkness. “I guess we don’t have much say, either way. I’ll take the first watch. Forget I said anything.”

Reuben squinted at her and then at Nacho. “Did you understand what that was all about?”

Nacho took a fork and carefully began scraping off some of the burned-on pancake batter, which had finally pulled loose. “I have no idea, but could it be that Brie talked with a Patron of her own and can’t tell us?”

Reuben paused, blinking rapidly as he tried to consider the implications. “If the Patron had given her some kind of boon that only worked if she didn’t talk about it? It would make sense, but only in that context. Otherwise, she’s always told us everything. Especially me.”

Nacho finished cleaning the pan and threw the water into the weeds. “We can’t talk about this either, if that’s the case. The Patrons listen, and the whole gaming system is aware of us… what we do, what we say. It’s how they can tailor those System messages just for us.”

They didn’t speak again, keeping the fire small, and took their usual turns of sleeping and taking watch. They were up again at first light, following the path of destruction through more trees; Sickamores, elms, and even a few of the Oilbark trees. At one point, they encountered a few Golden-Heart Demon Apples, which were growing more and more violent by the day.

The murderous fruits were akin to the Red Pernicious apples, only these were growing tentacles and teeth as they became more and more ripe. Eating the furious fruits was tricky, as they were mean and rotten on the outside, but had a deliciously sweet center. Uniquely, they inherently forced their Putrid Mana to the surface, so even at Tier zero, it was possible to eat their deliciously crisp cores without having to process them. It had taken a couple starving adventurers to brave the teeth and tentacles, but their sacrifice once upon a time had proven valuable to Nacho.

Brie shot a few of the apples with arrows and collected the credits while Nacho processed them. Twenty more credits were quickly available to be used as needed.

They found more destroyed settlements, more bones, more clothes, and a broken spear or two in the wake of the Calamity’s devastation. By noon, they reached what had to be the entrance to the Bove’s lair, which dwarfed everything around it. Numerous trees had been ripped from their roots and stacked in a mish-mash pile fifty feet tall to surround the mouth of the cavern. Everything around the pile of trees had died, and a river a half-mile wide proceeded to chug brown water south to points unknown. That was definitely the Muddy, running north to south.

There had been enough dungeons and monsters to keep the clusters of players localized in the AKC, though every now and again, someone would come from another area to spread stories of post-apocalyptic panic and mayhem from other places as far away as Denver and St. Louis. No one had ever made it from further than that in the three years that Nacho had survived.

The Bove’s lair looked like it had been hit by a concussive bomb. Along with the shredded trees, trampled wildlife and discarded bones were amassed in haphazard heaps in the dirt and drying mud. The intermingled trail of mud, slop, and feces led all the way up to a rambling walkway of trees and into the cave itself. Reuben bravely stepped forward, fighting to keep his gaze off his feet. “We’re going in there, right?”

“I hate being right. Of course this is the Bove’s lair.” Nacho winced and hesitated, knowing what his friend wanted him to say, instead forcing out what he actually thought was the best idea. “It’s a bad idea. No one, and I mean no one, ever managed to come out of there. We could wait until it comes out again to hunt and get it then.”

“Could be days. Could be a week! Do we really want to be gone from Armor Mountain that long?” Reuben shook his head. “The answer is no. We’re going in there.”

Brie handed the bow and arrow to Nacho. “Yes, we are. I broke off one horn. I’ll break off another and shove it down the thing’s throat!”

Reuben’s mouth dropped open. “Celestials, sweets. That’s hardcore.”

“That’s who I am.” Brie tossed her greasy hair, trying to be dramatic.

Meanwhile, Nacho whipped his backpack around and started pulling out treats. “Yes, we’re going in there, but first? Who wants to have leftover pancakes and fried ptarmigan drumsticks?”

“Were they made… with love?” Reuben reached for the food without waiting for an answer. They were. Everyone ate heartily, and soon they were buffed to the max and standing in front of the opening, weapons in hand.

They had a demon cow to kill.