Chapter 44

  “What do you mean they were wiped out?” The commander demanded for the fifth time. “They’re trained operatives! The mission was to take in a fifteen year old boy surrounded by untrained civilians armed with pitchforks and baseball bats! How could they be wiped out?”

  Rather than listening to the man’s tirade, the agent who he was berating pulled a pistol and shot him in the leg. “Oh my, you seem to have suffered an injury in the line of duty. You better get that looked at.”

  The man began cursing him, but the agent who had shot him then pointed the pistol at his own head and pulled the trigger. The bullet impacted his temple and--

  “Owch,” he said.

  He looked down at the injured man. “I’m level thirteen,” he told the level one man. “We don’t know what level these ‘untrained civilians’ are, but we can assume based on the fact that they wiped out the team that it’s high enough that bullets are no longer effective against them.”

  He held the gun in his hands for a moment, looking at it with disappointment, then ejected the clip and tossed both the clip and the pistol into a nearby trashcan. He looked down at the injured commander, who was looking at him like he’d...well like he’d just both won and lost Russian Roulette at the same time. With a semi-automatic nonetheless.

  He wasn’t completely uninjured by the bullet, and he had to hold some gauze to his temple for about an hour, until his ear stopped ringing. But the idiot commander and everyone else who was still level one had been cleared out of the command center in the mean time, and he was now in charge of the government’s operations in the area.

  He didn’t presume that to mean that he was in charge of the area. He had survived the dungeon twice. He had challenged it on hard, and then when the guns they had brought with them had proven ineffective against the enemies above floor three he’d retreated and reentered on normal.

  It wasn’t until the he’d been overrun and grabbed one of the goblin’s clubs from him that he’d understood. It wasn’t that the monsters were invulnerable. It was just that bullets didn’t work. Not unless you had a class designed to use guns.

  Something about this new world demanded more than simple physics to deal damage. There was some measure of overcoming an enemy’s innate defenses, defenses which he himself possessed now.

  He was a level thirteen Samurai.

  His name was Takanabe Shoto. Or that’s what his father called him at least. The man who had taught him to use a sword, and taught him of Bushido, the outdated code though it was. Shoto had gone into law enforcement because it was as close to being a Samurai as one could come in the modern day.

  But that was no longer true, he thought, fingering the blade that he wore on his side.

  No. The old ways have come once more, he thought to himself.

  “Map out the area that the target has claimed for himself. Try to identify their base, but do not make contact. I repeat, nobody makes contact with the target. When we have identified their base, then we will observe in silence for now.”

  The men and women who had not survived the dungeon run with him looked at him in confusion.

  “But sir,” a young man said. “They killed twenty-six government agents. We need to take them into custody before—”

  “Before what?” Shoto asked. “Before some idiot shoots at them and they act in self defense? We shot first because of my predecessor’s idiotic pride. They defended themselves in their own home . And more than that, they’ve just extended a protective barrier across a significant portion of the city where they live. A larger area than any Haven we’ve seen so far, indicating that they’ve cleared floor ten on hard. Something which no other returning civilian team has done so far . And you’d, what? Arrest them and put them on trial for defending themselves? Kill them? For defending themselves?”

  “Sir, that’s not your call to make,” someone else said. “With … with Commander Rykes injured, you’re the acting field commander but—”

  “Take it up with my superior,” Shoto said. “You’ll find him cowering under his desk a thousand miles that way. Perhaps you’d like to join him?”

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  The protests died as he thumbed his katana. It clicked open and closed as he waited for the idiots to make up their minds.

  He wasn’t even aware of the pressure that he was giving off, but the level one agents in the room were acutely aware of an aura of danger. That aura intensified every time his blade clicked out, ready to be drawn. Then it vanished when he clicked the blade closed into its scabbard.

  Which was almost as intimidating as the naked blade would be, for some reason.

  When the protests finally died, the work began.

  Shoto smiled and let go of his blade. He’d gotten it in the dungeon, and it already felt like a piece of him. Like the dungeon had taken a piece of his soul and folded it a thousand times to make this blade. He couldn’t imagine being without it.

  He’d thought he’d felt that way about his pistol.

  The one that he’d just thrown in the trash.

  “Live by the blade, die by the blade,” he said. He smiled, as he took the expression in a direction which was not commonly intended.

  He would live by the blade with pride. And when it came time to die, then he would die as he lived. With pride.

  He wondered if Eli Mathews was the same way. A boy who had challenged Hard Mode and emerged victorious must have some honor in him, after all.

  ~~~~~~

  You Are Entering A Greater Haven

  This Haven Is Owned By The Greater Guild: Arashantos

  You Are Unguilded: Apply to Arashantos? Yes/No

  ~#: Yes

  Guild Application Autoaccept is turned off. Application is added to Queue. Current number of applicants: 23,245/50,000

  Message From Guild Leader, Elias Mathews: I’m sorry everyone. There’s a limit to how many people can be in the guild and we need to figure some things out before we start accepting applicants. If you’re serious about applying, please visit the High School; we have several recruiters there who have limited invitation privileges.

  You don’t have to be a member of the guild to claim refuge in the Haven, but we’re limited on space. Priority is being given to children and pregnant women at the moment. We suggest that those who are old enough to take care of themselves look for a party and try to raise their levels or find another Haven with more space.

  It worked for us.

  We’re currently sheltering twenty thousand people. We figure we can maybe fit another five thousand in the space we have. I’m sorry but after that, we’ll start turning away those who are above the age of majority unless they can demonstrate that they’ve reached level five.

  Miguel Phelps read the guild message through his interface, then shook his head. He had arrived in the airport three hours ago, and had been part of a caravan making its way through the city ever since.

  He had finally, apparently, reached the corner of the kid’s Haven. He’d been a little surprised to have the message appear immediately upon reaching the border, but while the message was informative, it wasn’t immediately useful.

  He needed to talk to the kid himself.

  Unfortunately, that meant wading through a literal tide of humanity as the line of people waiting to get in stood nearby. There were three lines. One for, as mentioned in the message, families with young children and pregnant women. This line moved the fastest, followed by the line for anyone who had leveled up. Everyone else, the level one citizens of the city, were left waiting.

  Fortunately Miguel was escorted by a group of level five men from a security force. They had repeatedly cleared the first floor of the dungeon on hard mode to reach this point, and they assured him that it hadn’t been an easy task.

  They joined the second queue and, when they explained the situation to the functionary volunteer—herself a level one—she frowned and made a phone call. When she got the go ahead, she ushered Phelps through after only verifying his name with the interface.

  Phelps walked through the streets, looking around at the mass of humanity. Tents were being set up. Blankets, bottles of water, and boxed meals were being handed out. In many ways, it filled him with hope, as it showed one of the best aspects of humanity; the way that they can come together during a crisis.

  On the other hand; Monsters had been spawning for less than four days now. There was no sign that they would be stopping. Ever. Eli seemed to think that, to the contrary, the monsters would just keep getting stronger and stronger and stronger. He thought that the only solution was to just get stronger than the monsters threatening the surface.

  At least, until the Antithesis arrived. After that, then the rule-book would change again.

  A young man from the security company appeared and showed them to a house near the high school. Miguel straightened his back as he walked through the door, determined to make a good first impression on the founding members of the Arashantos Guild.

  ?