CWD: GA ~ Twenty-One

Nacho awoke to a gray light filling the air. The fire had faded to white coals in the early morning cold, the rocks around them failing to retain heat. Although he was conscious, Brie slept on. That meant Reuben would be above them on watch.

He rolled over onto his side. It was nice sleeping in until the sun actually rose into the sky. The Juxtaposition wasn’t pleasant. Even on its best days, it was more ‘death quest’ than ‘adventure fun’, but the rhythms were far more natural than the rat race of finding a career had been on Earth. No one was a slave to the clock, only to their own bell. As long as they had the basics—water, food, and shelter—anyone could sleep as much as they wanted.

One small issue: quality sleep and life-threatening stresses didn’t mix. Besides, Nacho knew getting out of his sleeping bag was going to suck. The air was chill, and more than that… he had gotten used to having good coffee again. He knew he should not have, but having coffee just… available was a temptation that he couldn't resist, even with his years of training as a minimalist. Now, the only kind of coffee they had was instant, and they only had nine servings; three coffees for three days. “It’s too soon…!”

He curled up into his sleeping bag, shifting from side to side, because that’s what people did when they slept on the ground. Nacho had considered grabbing sleeping mats, but that seemed like too much of a luxury—he figured that they’d eventually buy beds once they had a safe location all set up.

Finally, he gave in and pulled himself out of his sleeping bag. There was just no way that he could allow himself to waste time by lazing about. The fact of the matter was that they would all be happier about the horrors of the Juxtaposition if they had a little coffee to take the edge off.

Nacho didn’t wake Brie as he quietly got the fire started again, putting his saucepan over the heat and filling it with water. He figured they could use their metal water bottles for the instant coffee. Upon observing his roused team member, Reuben swung down from the top of the overhang. “Quiet night. No screaming, bleeding, or random midnight encounters. Best night ever.”

“So loud.” Brie grumpily pulled herself upright, and Nacho forced himself to keep his mouth shut about the lion's mane of hair she was currently sporting. “A good night for us, at least.”

That sobered Reuben. “Eventually, we’re going to go help people… right? Last night when I was reading through the Store, trying to get ready to sleep, I found a ‘create guild’ option and did some reading on the information it offered. We should start a guild, build a castle, get you a decent kitchen. I know, I know, first we need to upgrade our skills more, and you need to learn how to keep everyone fed.”

“Leave it to you to start figuring out the game mechanics of the world. Speaking of food, especially now that it is breakfast time, I found a recipe for omelets.” Nacho slid a stick into his crackling fire. “Do you guys know what a De Re Coquinaria is? Also, this might be a little strange… how much do you like omelets?”

Brie held up a hand. “Wait. Guilds? Is that like a workers’ union? More importantly, can you make omelets?”

Nacho smacked the little packets of instant coffee against a rock. “We could buy some eggs, and I could try an omelet, but I don’t think it will work out very well. I’m pretty sure I figured out the issue; I’m missing the tools of my trade. I can’t cook without a recipe, or a cookbook, or something. The problem is, we’re talking about hundreds of credits for even the lowest ones. I’m not sure it’s worth it at this point.”

“Fine, fine.” Brie waved off his noncommittal explanation, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes with her other hand. “Which takes us back to guilds. What are they?”

“Coffee first?” Nacho offered weakly; he hadn’t wanted to explain guilds yet. The discussion would only muddy their situation. “I have cream and sugar for you, Reuben.”

“Nice try.” Brie’s exasperated retort dug into him, and he actually flinched. “What the abyss, man? Reuben? You want to let me in on what a guild is?”

“It’s like a party—what we’re in—only scaled up a lot. There seem to be definite bonuses for creating a guild, but there are also some drawbacks. Nacho might know more, since the System’s free information is as cheerful as it is useless.”

“Listen.” Nacho poured the hot water from the pot into three of their six water bottles, adding enough sugar and creamer to Reuben’s before handing them out. “You’re right, and they are really important… but I’d rather not talk about guilds just yet. Before we get into the weeds, I want to level our skills, get a bunch of credits, and be in a position of power. I didn’t do that… well. Let’s just say it’s important and leave it at that.”

The last time he had joined a guild, he’d murdered a ton of people, CrossHumans, and monsters because of it. Add it to the list of things that Nacho didn’t want to talk about with his friends. The day he had run into other people and had found that they had a guild he could join had started off great, and had turned into a nightmare not long after. Maybe that was why Nacho had accepted life in the Juxtaposition so quickly—he knew that life could change in seconds.

But they had changed back, thanks to the Probability Vision. At some point, Nacho figured that Kronos the Patron would come and talk to him, and he wasn’t looking forward to it. He’d known warlocks who’d had close contact with their Patrons; there were always strings attached and terrible Faustian deals to be made—heavy on the terrible.

“It’s unfortunate that every day we don’t help people understand what’s going on, more die, but that’s not our fault,” Brie stated lightly, sipping her coffee. That was her in a nutshell—talking about people dying whilst enjoying a cup of joe.

“I’m fine, guys.” Reuben, the marshmallow of the group, realized that she was only saying that for his benefit. “I think in this case, it’s like in an airplane when the oxygen masks come down, if you know what I mean? You have to put yours on before you can help others?”

“Not that we’ll have airplanes anymore.” Brie’s remark was as bitter as her coffee. “I searched the Store, and there is nothing modern, except for the materials some stuff is made out of. It’s all just swords, axes, crossbows and the like.”

Nacho winced at the taste of his instant coffee, briefly considering dumping sugar and cream in it, but ultimately opting to save those for Reuben. “Look, this is all less than ideal. I just want to get these knives first—then I think I’m going to need this De Re Coquinaria book. Abyss, I just wish I knew what it did. Buying stuff blindly from the Store is an iffy proposition, but I don’t think I have a choice.”

Reuben pondered the implications. “This book sounds like a beach town in California. Dude, tomorrow, let’s head down to De Re Coquinaria, and we can go surfing!”

“From here on out, I’m calling it the Aria, like it’s a list of songs or something. I’m dropping the rest of it.” Nacho pulled out their food, packets of instant oatmeal which he made in the pot, and they passed the pot around and each took a few bites with their own spoon. After breakfast, they broke camp. Reuben turned back to wave at the rocks. “It was a good campsite. We should call it the Rocky Top, like in the song. You know…good ol’ Rocky Top.”

They found the same game trail and continued to follow it south, ready to jump on any monsters they came across. A short while later, they surprised the same herd of Wight-Tailed Deer, but the animals were too quick for them to ambush and sped away, the pale arms of their tails sticking straight up. If Nacho didn’t know any better, he’d have sworn that those pale hands were waving goodbye.

They reached Tomahawk Creek by noon. Being back in the world of the Juxtaposition was strange. He knew he should be hungry, but he wasn’t, since his skills remained unused, and it hadn’t been twenty-four hours since his last meal. It all felt strange, as well as perfectly familiar. They eventually found a section of the river with boulders rising from the water where they crossed, moving upstream until they spotted Tomahawk Falls. In the real Kansas City, there hadn’t been such a place, but here, the stream fell from a cliff’s edge, pouring about thirty feet down into a crystalline pool.

According to Myron, behind the pools lay a cave that led to the MurderSong Dungeon. After his announcement that this was where he got his amazing blades, it had been repeatedly ransacked. There were always new monsters worming their way into the caverns or climbing up from the deepest caves, where the high-Tier monsters lurked.

Nacho had run some dungeons to the north, but he’d mostly stayed above ground doing unwise things for the first six months. He had chosen to be an assassin, and his prize for the ill-advised choice of joining a guild was to carry out assassinations, instead of delving to find excellent gear.

He and his friends kept worming their way through the trees, following the game trail, when they were stopped in their tracks by the shout of human voices. The Dinner Party dove into a thicket of dense bushes—a perfect place to hide.

“Aren’t they just people?” Brie’s voice was too loud, and Nacho almost slapped a hand over her mouth before thinking better of it.

“Maybe,” Nacho cautioned her. “Think of a zombie apocalypse. Not everyone is a friendly sheriff’s deputy from rural Georgia; most people are just going to want to survive however they can.”

Reuben grimaced at his friend. “Wow. A Talking Dead reference. That show-"

Nacho held up a hand, hearing a familiar voice that set his blood to boiling. “Abyss, Crave, why are we out here in the middle of nowhere? You dragged me away from that little settlement we were going to plunder. The food would have been terrible, sure, but at least we wouldn’t have to do any of the butchering—you know we get credits for the people we kill?”

That was Hogan, and the fact that he was talking to someone meant he’d be with Crave and Whitney. The three had hooked up early and had never been able to escape the rumors that Hogan and Whitney had done terrible things when they first arrived in the Starter World. From this conversation, it seemed that was true.

As for Crave, he claimed he’d figured out the guild rules early and convinced people to join them because there was strength in numbers: it was only because of a good marketing campaign that Crave had gotten so rich so fast. If Crave and his goons were getting credits through all-out murder, Nacho didn’t want to engage with them until it was clear that he and friends would win the fight.

Nacho lifted a finger to his lips to keep his friends quiet. They nodded with wide eyes, hearing the same things he was. Crave, Hogan, and Whitney walked right past them. All three carried sacks made from random clothes and rags they’d tied together. Crave was in a torn suit and expensive shoes that probably wouldn’t last the week. He did have a pretty nice iron spear—not homemade—that he must’ve scavenged.

Hogan merely had a massive club that he’d augmented with nails. He must’ve bought those nails from the Store, then used a stone to pound them in. The huge man wore clothes that he had likely grabbed off someone else: the jeans didn’t fit him, the shirt was far too tight, and the Crocs didn’t exactly help the look.

Whitney wore overalls with a plaid shirt and a woodsman’s axe to match the plaid. Funnily enough, Nacho had always known Whitney as a bigger guy, short and wide… but right now, he was downright slender, meaning he had gained a huge amount of muscle and fat after the end of the world.

Crave stopped abruptly. “Wait, I’m feeling something from this boon thing. Something dangerous is near.”

“We know about the boon,” Hogan growled at the man that would someday be his boss.

“What is it?” Whitney swung his axe to limber up.

Nacho’s killing intent sharpened as he thought about attacking them. He knew that he could put his years of effort to good use and kill them before they became an issue for him. When it came to Hogan and Whitney, he wouldn’t care at all. But Crave…? Nacho and Crave had been close, and in the end, they would have been friends if the guy hadn’t ordered his death.

Nacho knew Crave could be a hard man, hard enough to make decisions that killed people—Nacho, for instance. But right now, the three were killing people just to get a little bit of a head start. He wasn’t afraid of a fight, but he also didn’t want to let his friends see him murder a trio of people in cold blood.

Brie crouched lower, leaning against her hammer. Would she be able to use it against other humans? From the intense glint in her eyes due to their conversation topic, Nacho thought so. Reuben had equipped his gauntlets, and he’d fight if he had to, but it was clear the big guy didn’t want to hurt other people.

Crave glanced around. “I had a definite sense there was something important back there, by the waterfall. Can’t put my finger on it. It was dope, though—but this area is rapidly becoming more dangerous than dope. Something near us is considering killing us… and I think it will if we don’t leave. My senses keep wavering as though it hasn’t made up its mind.”

“You and your boon.” Hogan’s sardonic laughter clearly showed what he thought about Crave’s ‘feelings’. Whitney didn’t say anything, merely standing with the axe resting across his left shoulder.

“So far, my Dangerous/Dope Intuition has come in handy,” Crave snarled at the man. “Just like Fourtuna said it would. He also whispered about a cook that wasn’t supposed to exist when I talked to him. If we had a cook, we wouldn’t have to eat rank deer meat or those awful apples. We'd have real food.”

“Store food is fine.” Hogan spit into the weeds. “At least that Pattern told you how to get at it. Tell you what, it’s a lot better than the chow we had at Leavenworth.”

“Patron,” Crave rebuked his minion.

“That food tastes like socks,” Whitney whined quietly. “Or old tennis balls.”

Hogan snorted and rolled his eyes. “You said you thought there was a dungeon or somethin’ back there. If we’d have found it, we could’ve got enough credits to buy food instead of needing to axe people to hand over their stuff.”

“If we started a guild, we could collect credits on a much larger scale. Just like any gang large enough to steal them does: taxes.” Crave frowned and turned to stare right where Nacho and his friends were crouched behind a thick tangle of bushes. Their camouflaged clothes blended in, just like Nacho had planned, so the man adjusted his ripped suit coat and looked away. “At some point, someone else is going to figure out that’s how you get real power in this game. We need to leave. Let’s follow the stream east. We can double back if we need to do so later.”

The three men kept on marching down the path. If they’d had any ranger skills, they would’ve been able to see human footprints on the path, but Nacho was pretty sure that Hogan and Whitney were low-Tiered Body Players. Not Crave. Crave had done well enough in the Evaluation to become an assassin, just like he had. He’d kept that a secret from almost everyone for over a year, saying he hadn’t done well enough to even buy a class. Crave had other secrets, like the fact that he’d always had close ties to a Patron—someone called Fourtuna; the same Patron who had bestowed him with his Dangerous/Dope Intuition.

Now it seemed that Fourtuna knew about Nacho being a Common Cook. If the Patron knew more about Nacho, that might change this iteration of the Juxtaposition dramatically. More than ever, Nacho wanted the MurderSong blades, and he wanted to level up his friends. If Crave came after him, Nacho wanted to scrape that team off the business end of Brie’s Splatter Mallet.

Reuben laughed awkwardly. “Well, those three seemed nice. I mean, aside from the murdering, thieving, and what-have-you.”

Nacho gave the Healer a reassuring pat on the back. “It seems like they’re looking for a cook to make them dinner. Good thing I can’t cook, eh? Let’s go steal the dungeon he couldn’t find. Listen, I know that guy. He’s going to start a guild, and it’s going to be big. But that’s not for at least a week, months if we can do enough to save the people that he would otherwise rob and kill. Abyss, maybe we can keep him from starting a guild entirely.”

“You knew him?” Brie inquired with an arch look. “He seemed like a real charmer.”

“I’m not telling you about three years of messed-up Juxtaposition horrors, but I don’t want to live like I did then. Long story short, that was the guy who kept me alive for a long, long time. We have a… complicated history.”

He didn’t mention that Crave was the same guy who had rammed a knife into his heart. That was a little too gruesome to mention, especially when things were going so well.