The World Which Is, CH 102

I want to head out the next day, but the others aren’t done. Or, I figure, they want to soak up people for a bit longer. So much for

I want to head out the next day, but the others aren’t done. Or, I figure, they want to soak up people for a bit longer. So much for

I want to head out the next day, but the others aren’t done.

Or, I figure, they want to soak up people for a bit longer.

So much for Brandon and his ‘adventurers prefer monsters to people,’ thing.

I stay in the club.

I stay occupied by finding partners to have sex with.

Explorers are good for that. They don’t mind where their sex comes from.

*

A long week later, and with a smirking Brandon, every time he looks at me, we finally leave St-Louis. He doesn’t so much rib me about it as points out I am taking a liking to sex, just like he said I would.

I don’t remember him saying that, but I don’t waste my time arguing.

Look. He’s right in this. Sex is fun. And now that I don’t think of it as this special thing to have just with Josie, I am enjoying it.

It’s three days to the first town, and this time I don’t let myself believe that just because I don’t have the reflex to run the numbers with my friends, or the few people we pass by, it means I’m fine.

I am never making that mistake again.

So, when we see the first farmer in the field, I’m not surprised that I then notice the height of the sunflowers. That it means that once he bends down, he’s out of sight, so no one would notice if he died, and while there’s no way he’s high enough in levels to gain all that much out of killing him, it would be quick. How many farmers are in the field? How far would we be on the other side of the village before they’d be expected home? Would animals get to the bodies before they were found, therefor hiding what I did? Could I do anything to draw animals to the bodies?

Maybe I should keep some of the meat from the kills, instead of cooking it all from now on.

Yeah. I am not fine.

I don’t act on the numbers. Mostly because I’ve convinced myself they’re too low to warrant the risk of Brandon, who is watching me like a hawk, or Helen, who isn’t, but also isn’t stupid, working out I did it.

Their numbers are not in my favor yet.

Oh man, do I hate what that ‘yet’ implies.

I stick to my hunting, and yes, I can’t stop myself from keeping a treen of fresh meat in my inventory. Not as part of a plan, I tell myself. But to give animal something to chew on while we run off.

Yeah. I’d have an easier time believing it if we weren’t in the habit of turning any animal or monsters that threaten us into dead meat, and possibly our next meal.

The trade road from Louisville to Kansas City is well traveled enough the wilderness levels around it aren’t high enough to threaten anyone prepared for a trip.

I don’t gain any levels in my skills by the time we reach the town of Jonesburg. The ones that are still low enough a few weeks of regular training would increase them don’t get that much training. I don’t come across enough monsters to do my cryptozoology skill any good, and while there are more animals, I don’t have much interest in studying them beyond if there’s enough meat on them to make the hunt worthwhile.M

My weather watching skill also isn’t going up, even with Brandon quizzing me about that multiple times a day. On the plus side, we haven’t been surprised by a storm in I don’t remember how long.

We don’t stay there long. I sell the excess food from the daily hunts for nowhere near as much as they have to be worth. Buy the few things we need and leave.

I nearly murder someone there.

I’d gotten separated, somehow. Or maybe I arranged to lose track of them. I don’t even know if I can trust my own thinking anymore.

But there was no one to stop me when I heard the scuffle. I reached them in time to see the woman shank the other.

And I ran the number. She’d just killed someone, which meant she’d gotten a boost in her experience. She was a murderer—like me—so killing her would keep everyone safe. There was a second knife, so I use that, put it in the dead woman’s hand, and have people believe they killed each other.

Problem solved.

She saw me.

If she attacks me, I’m in my right to defend myself.

Don’t hear anyone coming, so I can still pull off my plan.

It’s not that I talked myself out of it, that keeps her alive.

It’s how she looks at me. The mania in her expression, the need.

I’m not quite far gone enough that I don’t understand I’m looking at her the exact same way.

Nearly throwing up almost gets me killed. Brandon would have had a field day if that had happened. Me taken down by some town ruffian.

I can’t stop myself from beating her to an inch of her life, but I manage not to go any further.

Once I’ve caught my breath. Oh yeah, that’s what you were doing, Dennis. Catching your breath. It’s why you were shaking so hard. Exhaustion from such an easy fight, and not holding yourself back from finishing the job and gaining that easy experience.

Once I’ve caught my breath, I yell for the guards and explain what happened. While I don’t say why I nearly beat her to death, I don’t lie about nearly doing it.

They don’t honor me for stopping her, thank the system, but they also don’t look at me with the disgust I think I’m due.

“Had to be done,” one of them says, as others carry her away and the dead woman. I’m not offered a reward. They leave me there to deal with what happened.

I have to tell Brandon. He doesn’t give me a choice about it. He knows something happened the instant he sees me, so I tell him.

Fortunately, he isn’t looking at me with pride by the time I’m done. I would probably have tried to kill him if he’d been proud of any of this. He’s somber. He points out I was lucky, and I lose it on him.

Of course, I know I was lucky. I’m not an idiot. Again, I tell him we have to tell Helen. I can’t be left unsupervised. Again, he shoots me down. For the same reasons as before. We won’t be able to make her understand I’m trying to control it. All she’ll see is the threat I’ve become, and she’s going to protect the greater number of people.

Meaning she’s going to turn me over to the guards, and they are going to arrange for me to die.

I am a threat to everyone.

I should hand myself over.

Fuck the quest. Someone else can finish it.

But I don’t want to die. Especially not out here, with my dad never finding out. Or worse, finding out when someone tells him the monster his son became.

So I go along with him.

Again.

*

The city of Columbia is chaotic.

It’s the mid-point between St-Louis and Kansas City and there are markets everywhere. The coral for the caravans might as well just be another market. Reaching the club is almost a fight.

It’s not like Detroit—nothing’s like Detroit—but the roads are packed with people, carts, animals and we have to push through everything and everyone.

“Thief!” Is yelled every few minutes, and by the time we finally make it to the club, I’m pretty sure I’m sort some dried meat. My money’s as it should be, at least. Braving that again isn’t appealing, but, as Helen points out, I have stuff to sell, and another healing spell to buy, if I can afford it. So, in her company, I leave the safety of the club.

Okay. The positive is that I get that new healing spell. Three mana heals one point. That, with training, I can bring down to one for one. The next tier of spell is one for one, but at thirty thousand, I don’t expect I’ll be able to afford it before I’ve returned to Court. And it’s not like I need some super powerful healing spell. Just enough to patch me up in a pinch so I won’t die to a monster.

Or a bounty hunter.

And that’s the negative.

I am certain—confident—I didn’t subconsciously engineer getting separated from Helen. It was difficult enough sticking with her while getting shoved around that all it took was a moment of inattention and I was alone.

Well, no longer with someone who could stop me.

I hurried back to the club before the numbers I’d been running since arriving proved too tempting. The problem with that being I didn’t know where the club was.

I’d tried to keep track as we struggled through the crowd. But most of my attention had to be on Helen if I wanted to stay with her.

I’ll say that, at least, when the old man said he could guide me back to the club, as I asked everyone for direction. I didn’t drop my guard. So there’s at least that. I’d learned that it wasn’t because someone offered to help that they weren’t a threat, or even meant it.

Relief, when he took me out of the crowds and into a side alley, did cause me not to react as quickly as I should have, and his sword was in my side. He had aimed for my heart, so I was fast enough to stay alive, and as soon as he pulled it out, I healed the damage.

Then I attacked.

I attacked to kill.

I didn’t even bother with the numbers. He’d tried to kill me, he was a would be murderer, if not an actual one—like me—and for that, he deserved to die. The levels I’d get from doing it? Just a nice bonus. And in this city, I wouldn’t have to do anything to hide the body. It wasn’t like anyone would notice him among this chaos.

I don’t kill him.

It’s not for lack of trying.

But I’m the one who’s nearly dead when the guards finally show up.

Oh, and the reason he attacked me? Tried to kill me?

That bounty, again.

While they are busy subduing him, I leave. I don’t care what happens to him; if he goes free without me there to accuse him. I just don’t want to be there. Want to be anywhere.

I can’t do this anymore.

Not like this.

I manage to make my way to the club, to our room there, where I wait for Brandon and carefully think about what I’m going to ask him to do.

*

“There you are,” he said, relieved, on entering. “Helen was worried…. Looks like she was right to be. Is your attacker alive?”

I nod.

“That’s good.”

“No, it isn’t. If the guards hadn’t showed up, I’d be dead. But that’s not the problem, Brandon.”

“What was it?” he asks, sitting on the chair.

“I wanted to kill him. I didn’t defend myself. I fought to kill. I’ve been fighting the urge all day, and it’s exhausting.”

“You can’t give up, Dennis. You—”

“I can’t do this, Brandon. I’m not going to be able to. At some point, I’m going to be too tired to resist and I’m going to kill someone. Probably multiple.”

“So you just want to give up?” he sounds disgusted. “What about your quest? The letter?”

“I don’t want to give up, but I need to do something drastic. Something that’s going to force me to control this or kill me. Either way, I’m not going to be as much of a threat as I am right now.”

He eyes me suspiciously.

“I want you to take me to the worse part of the city.”

“Dennis, I don’t know where—”

“Come off it, Brandon. The first thing you do in a city is find the worse people in it. You’ve been here before, so you know which parts of the city no one sane should set foot in.”

“You wanting to go there tells me something about your state of mind.”

“Yeah. Well, desperation will do that to a guy.”

“You aren’t going to survive, Dennis. Those people are not going to look at you and think; ‘okay, just until he’s tired of it.’ Or ‘let’s just teach him a lesson.’ They are going to tear you apart.”

I nod. That isn’t my plan. “But you know someplace where, if I can keep my wits about me, keep from losing it and going for the kill, I have a chance.” I don’t even make it a question.

“I do,” he finally says. “But even that’s not certain, and if they overwhelm you, I don’t know if I’ll be able to reach you in time for—”

“No. You aren’t coming to my rescue. Your job is to get me there, watch what happens, and if I don’t survive, once you’ve delivered the letter, to go to court and tell my father. Tell him I tried to be good. That I tried to help. But that he was right. Out here. It’s not for people like us.”

“I can’t take the journal off your dead body, Dennis.” He says that like that makes my plan unworkable.

“It’s in the chest, the letter’s in it.”

“I can’t—”

“The bond ends when I die, right? With me dead, anyone can take the journal. You’re the only one who knows where it is. You’ll get the quest when you pick it up. Once the letter’s delivered, you can read it and see all the places Aaron discovered.”

“Dennis, you can’t do this.”

“What the fuck do you want me to do, Brandon? Walk around like nothing’s wrong until I kill again?”

“But you’re going to die there.”

“Better me than everyone else I’ll kill when I lose control. I’m going to break that fucking thing or die in the attempt.”

“I can’t—”

“Let me make this plain for you, Brandon. I’m doing this. I am walking out there, I’m going to ask around and make my way to the kind of people who are going to see make as their toy to bat around and I’m going to fight as hard as I can to not kill any of them. Without your help, I’m dead for sure.”

“You can’t ask me to do this and just stand on the sideline if they’re going to kill you.”

“I can. As your friend, Brandon, I’m telling you I can’t be allowed to live if this addiction controls me. You aren’t protecting me anymore. You’re endangering everyone around me. Silver.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking of me, Dennis. If you die….”

“A lot of people get to live.”

Brandon snorts. “Sure.” He stands. “Come on. We need to do this before I come to my senses and knock you out, tie you up, and leave you that way until we’re in Kansas City.”

“I would love to hear you explain that to your sister.”

“At this point, she can go fuck herself.”

*

Surprisingly, the part of the city Brandon takes me to is less crowded, not more. Always thought worse neighborhood meant more crowded for some reason. We are eyed, and followed, but at a distance. We are outsiders. They’re probably trying to determine if we’re predator or prey.

I so fucking hope I’m something else entirely. Either of those gets me killed.

There has got to be a balance.

When Brandon stops, we’re in an empty plaza.

“Last chance to come to your senses, Dennis. The people in charge here know me, know the kind of damage I can cause if they start something. But the moment I walk away from you, you’re fair game.”

“Tell me I have a chance to survive this.”

“Unless something changed since I was here last, Kranson’s the boss. He was level sixteen, so at most he’s eighteen now. It’s been a few years. But they don’t kill people here, so the growth is natural. He won’t get involved until the end, even his lieutenants won’t until it’s clear the ‘troupes’ can’t deal with you. Way you’re dressed, he’d going to start them at level ten for sure, and they are going to gang up on you. I’m telling you again, Dennis. This is going to kill you.”

“You know what to do if that happens.”

“Fuck. You better survive this, Dennis. If you don’t, I’m going to….”

I grin. “Good thing I’ll be dead, then. Isn’t it?”

He glares at me. Curses again, and walks away.

Unlike his warning, the attack doesn’t start.

To make sure there are no doubts why I’m here, I equip my sword and shield. I’m here to fight. Send them at me.

Six rush out from doorways. Brandon said most likely level tens. They can’t all be fighter-related classes, not with how lean some of them are. So one level each, which makes the next one to kill easier and so on.

I parry one while calculating which will be the best option, and pain at my back forces me to focus on something other than the numbers.

I parry and block. I remain mostly on the defensive, but I know that can’t last. I have to take them down so I’ll get the next group, probably slightly higher level. I’m distracted from running the number by a short sword getting by my defense and stabbing me in the leg. I punch that girl hard enough she doesn’t get up, but she’s still breathing.

I return to the defensive long enough to mumble the words to the spell. Would be faster if I did it louder, with gestures and all that, but fortunately, it still works with the bare minimum.

Then I go aggressive with kicks and using my sword as a club and the pommel to make my punch hit harder.

Then they are on the ground, crawling away. Me over one of them, the last one to fall, the one who gave me the most work. The highest level one.

Before I can act, someone screams and runs out of a doorway. Then three more follow her, and I’m fighting, paying for every time I pay attention to the numbers by getting cut. My mana’s now at half.

First time that’s ever been a concern.

When they’re down, I try not to think of the numbers. They are down and out. They don’t matter.

Easy kill is how I see them. Easy levels.

The next group is eight, and they make me work for this victory. Mana to a quarter. But I didn’t consciously think of the numbers for the last part of the fight. They come back as soon as they are down, though.

Another group, and with this one, it’s my stamina that’s the problem.

I need a spell for that, too. I think I have an ability that deals with it.

I barely think at all for the last part of the fight. It’s just me, my sword, my shield. I’m not fighting people. I’m not fighting levels.

I’m not fighting.

I’m…what?

Then it ends and I can’t hold on to that feeling.

The numbers are there, and I’m tired enough my sword’s raised when the man screams.

One, easy-peasy.

I wish.

I’m on the defensive, hard. And that’s not keeping me from getting damaged. He also doesn’t give me a chance to heal. He presses and presses and presses. I see it in his eyes. Not the desire to kill me, but to keep me from killing anyone.

He is going to stop me. Or die trying.

I almost let him do it.

That temptation wars with the numbers.

Either would be so easy.

Either would end this for me.

I’d be dead. Or I’d be a monster.

Dennis wouldn’t be anymore.

So easy to give into either one.

But I don’t want either.

I bash my shield in his face and don’t attack.

I don’t want to die. I don’t want to kill.

He’s what, level twenty? Higher than Brandon predicted. That two level—

That I don’t want.

He comes at me fast, swords thrusting and swinging. Wrestling with what’s easy means I get cut. That by the time I slam my shoulder in to him and I’m able to breathe, I’m also fighting with my anger, which feeds the numbers.

But I don’t attack.

If I’m not going to kill. What am I going to do?

If I’m not going to let myself die. What am I going to do?

He attacks and I defend myself.

I get an opening to end this.

I see it. The numbers line up.

I don’t take it.

He knows I could have killed him. It’s in his eyes, the surprise he’s still alive, and now I’m fighting with pride. That I’m so much better than him for holding myself back.

But that’s a lie.

I am not better because I don’t kill him. I’m not better; because I want to kill so fucking hard.

The numbers are in my favor. All I have to do is act.

I don’t.

“What’s your game?” he asks, voice trembling.

Like any of this is a game.

“Not killing.” And the numbers want me to kill. “Not dying.” It would be so easy to drop my sword and shield and let him end this.

“So…” he trails off, confused.

“If you want to keep attacking me, I’ll defend myself.” I won’t die. “But I won’t kill you.” I will not kill.

He squares his shoulders. “You started this. You came into my territory and threatened us.”

“I did. And I’m sorry.” And I am. “I wish I hadn’t done this, but I was stuck. I needed your help finding a way to survive.”

“My help?”

“I’m sorry I hurt your people.”

“So…what? You think this is over?”

I hope he doesn’t think my chuckles directed at him. “No. It’ll never be over.” The numbers are still there. Telling me I can win this. They aren’t lying. “But I see a way through now.”

I will defend myself. I will not die

I will defend myself. I will not kill.

“You need to pay for what you did.”

“Tell me how.”

“What?”

“How do I repay you for the help you gave me?”

“Dennis,” Brandon whines. Yes, that is a whine, no matter what he’s going to claim afterward.

The man looks in Brandon’s direction and shifts his posture, goes back to readying himself for a fight.

“Don’t get involved, Brandon.”

“You clearly got what you’re after, so we need to go.”

“Not before I’ve made this right.”

“You and your fucking too good for anyone’s goodness,” he mutters as he joins me. “Come on Kranson. Just put us to work.”

“You don’t have to do this, Brandon. I’m the one—”

“Oh, just shut up. I’m just glad you didn’t get yourself killed with this madness. Come on Kranson, I don’t have all week. What work needs to be done, no one else here wants to touch. You get the chance to piss me off without me doing anything about it. Don’t go wasting it.”