Chapter 25: Book 1: Chapter 11 (Part 2 of 4)

I didn’t set a punishing pace, but as the road was flat with no upward incline, we made good time without exerting ourselves. Leaving Flint, the M-21 was a four-lane road with a grass verge between the oncoming traffic, not that there was any.

Shana had been right the other night; I hadn’t been out this way before. The land on either side was mostly cleared for farming purposes, but what surprised me was the unexpected frequency of homes just off Corunna Road. There seemed to be a house particularly on the right-hand side of the road every few hundred metres.

We passed a few abandoned cars, but not as many as I expected. No people as of yet, though it was early, and I would have expected most people to have fled for safety before it got dark last night.

We had been cycling for twenty minutes and had probably covered about four miles before we found the first signs of life, or to be more accurate the first signs of where there used to be life.

We were passing a house on our right and lying face down on the porch was a heavyset woman. Her legs were inside the doorway and this prevented the door from being closed. Wordlessly we turned off the road and up the gravel driveway to the white house.

We dismounted from our bikes and armed ourselves. Now we were closer it was obvious the woman lay in a pool of her own blood and there was a light blue nimbus surrounding her as there had been with Reg, the dead super of my apartment block.

I didn’t even bother looking for a pulse, the lootable nimbus told us what we needed to know. There were no visible signs of trauma on her back so whatever had killed her had done so from the front.

Perhaps during the night, she had heard something, come to the door, and opened it to investigate and had been attacked by whatever it was she had heard. There was an aluminium baseball bat that had rolled a few feet away from her at the side of the house.

Not that it would have been much help.

I couldn’t tell you if I would have reacted differently before becoming an Acheronian, but I didn’t hesitate to loot the unfortunate woman and take her starting coin.

Some people might consider that heartless and dark. Right now, my only feelings on the subject were that it was practical and passing up coin that might buy my people life-saving gear in the future out of ‘respect’ for the dead helped no one, least of all this poor soul.

The house was a bungalow and one of the smaller properties we had passed. I waited at the threshold for a moment, straining my senses for any hint of what might lie within. When I heard nothing, I turned to Shana.

“We’ll sweep the place quickly. See if there are any survivors or other looting opportunities. I don’t want us to be here long,” I whispered.

She nodded and we headed into the house.

We were in a hallway and I passed the open door to the lounge. From the side of my eye, I could see it was open plan and led to the kitchen. The rooms looked empty, but I motioned for Shana to go in and check it out while I went deeper towards the bedrooms at the back.

The first bedroom looked like it belonged to the dead woman in the doorway. I moved on to the next and found a deeply horrific, but not unexpected scene, one that jarred even my cold pragmatist’s heart.

The wallpaper of the room was blue with spaceship designs and there were action figure toys thrown all over the floor. It was a young boy’s bedroom, and the occupant was in a corner closet with what appeared to be his older sister holding him tight.

The real world can be a cruel place and hiding in the closet hadn’t saved them from whatever had forced its way into their house last night.

I heard Shana walking down the hallway, coming to join me.

“I don’t think there is anything back here, Shana. Can you go back outside and make sure no one nabs your bike, please,” I called out to her. I infused a hint of my will into the request to ensure her compliance.

“Yes, Torin,” she said with a little uncertainty, followed by the sounds of her departing steps.

She didn’t need to see this. Although I suspected she hadn’t believed me when I said there was nothing back here, I know I wouldn’t have given the situation.

I looted the young ones and then did the only thing I could for them in the circumstances, made sure nothing like those scarabs could make use of them and covered them up with a sheet.

When I made my way past their mother in the doorway, I dragged her back inside the house and gave her the same treatment, using a blanket I’d purloined from the closet.

I walked out into the sun, closing the door behind me. Shana stood a few feet away from the porch, waiting for me. There was a tear in her eye, she had guessed what it was I had found, or perhaps felt my pity through the bond.

“Maybe we should dig a grave for the fallen?” she asked quietly.

“That would take too long, and we have to keep moving,” I reasoned.

“I know,” Shana replied sorrowfully.

We mounted up and rode back down to the road. I caught Shana giving the place one last pained look as we pushed on.

Despite the unpleasantness at the first house we investigated, I didn’t let it stop us from repeating the process if we passed houses that exhibited similar signs that the occupants had perished. I decided against giving the houses more than a cursory sweep as I didn’t want to waste too much daylight, but if we could pick up some extra resources quick and easy then it was worth a short detour.

There were noticeable clusters of houses that showed signs of being attacked. Which as we rode, I figured out was roughly at the halfway points between the larger communities. Which meant spawning crystals were more likely to be nearby.

We did see living people, of course.

Some folks were out and about, the smartest ones packing up and preparing to depart for places with more people. The less smart but not completely stupid were reinforcing their homes. And there were a handful who stubbornly refused to accept things had changed and behaved as if it were a regular Saturday morning.

I analysed people as we rode by, most had the Civilian class. We passed one family where the eldest daughter was a Silverblood Elf Mage, so not everyone had ignored the opportunity during character creation, but many had.

It was mid-morning when we cycled through the town of Owosso without stopping. There was a heavy sheriff’s presence on Main Street and not wanting to be stopped or questioned, we powered through at speed before anybody got any bright ideas.

Encounters of the dangerous variety had been few. Most of the houses had been abandoned by the monsters that invaded them. We finished off another group of six redcaps and were attacked on the road by a flock of murderous magically saturated crows.

The crows weren’t in good shape, but the power of flight made them more difficult to deal with than the redcaps.

The crows like the dogs before them had no loot.

The redcaps coughed up two more pairs of Shoddy Leather Boots, four pieces of Shoddy Leather Scraps and one hundred and twenty copper.

By the time we rolled up to the outskirts of St. Johns in the early afternoon, we had picked up over one hundred extra gold and a couple thousand silver and copper from our macabre looting endeavours.

St. John’s was smaller than Owosso, though not by much. There was a significant difference from the earlier town as there was no sheriff’s or any law enforcement presence in sight at all. We freewheeled down the street a little slower this time keeping our eyes peeled.

Several shopfronts had their windows smashed in and there were significantly fewer people on the streets.

Some of the handful we saw were openly carrying firearms, but nobody pointed them at us. They watched us suspiciously before moving on with their own affairs. We reached the centre of the town and were coming up on the post office when Quixbix piped up.

<Torin, we are about to pass the St. John’s podium. You may want to stop and interface with it.>

Why, Quixbix? I thought you said you could give us any relevant quests from the podiums?

<I can, but you can also buy equipment from them. Although I could do that for you too, you would still have to pick up the items in person. I can’t transport them directly to you via the Framework> he updated me.

I see. Quixbix, why didn’t you mention this before?

<You didn’t have the Gold to buy much in Flint while the authorities were all over the podium in Owosso, and the mayor had instituted a fifty percent town tax. Whoever is in charge here hasn’t done anything like that yet.>

Okay, but you should have mentioned this earlier. Are the prices reasonable?

<Not really, you always pay a premium for getting things directly from the Framework. When you get crafters established, they will undercut the costs significantly, but it will be several weeks I would think before people have levelled enough and sorted out the infrastructure to set up shops supplying adventuring gear.>

“Shana, we’re going to stop at the podium. A little birdie has told me we can stock up on needful things. Can you watch the locals for any unexpected interest?” I asked her and pressed the brakes on the bike.

“No problem, Torin,” she said, and pulled over beside me.

We left the street and rode up onto the pavement. The podium was a black onyx four-sided obelisk that stood twenty feet high, reminiscent of the monument at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The difference being this had a point at the top and each side of the obelisk had a screen. It had been placed on the corner of the street beside the post office, which was locked and closed.

We propped our bikes up against the post office wall and I approached the podium on its East face, so my back was to the post office building and not exposed to passers-by on the street.

When I got to the podium I stared at the blank screen for a moment.

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<You need to touch it> Quixbix prompted me with the obvious.

I’m not an idiot. I was searching for where to touch it. I groused back at him mentally.

<Doesn’t matter, anywhere will do.>

I didn’t mentally answer him this time but reached forward and tapped the right-hand side. The menu popped up for me to peruse. The graphical display was similar to an ATM or a ticket machine in the train stations back in England. They might have the same in the U.S., but I hadn’t been to a train station here since I arrived. There was a numbered list of options and an alphanumeric keyboard along the bottom edge.

The list of options included Town Information, Quests Available, Local Market, Currency Exchange, and Podium Market.

I tapped on Podium Market as I figured that would be the option for buying directly. Two new options were displayed, Buying and Selling.

Quixbix, can we sell our trash gear to the podiums? I queried.

<Yes, you can. However, the return for doing so is poor. Selling them to crafters who can disassemble them for the parts is usually a more profitable option> he replied helpfully.

Understood.

I clicked on Buying and there were further options for narrowing down what I wanted to purchase, or you could use the search function if you had something specific in mind. My first port of call was the Armour lists.

I quickly learned there was another level of quality between shoddy and regular materials called poor. There were several grades of quality higher than the prefix-less regular quality, but the prices for those items were exorbitant. Even the Leather armour pieces were one hundred Gold for a pair of gloves. Each of the Poor Leather equivalents cost ten Gold for the smaller pieces and twenty Gold for the Cuirass.

The podium recognised my bond with Shana, and I could choose to send the different pieces directly to our special gear slots in our inventories. I made our armour selections and spent one hundred and twenty Gold on a pair of Helms, Leggings, Pauldrons and replacement Cuirass’ for each of us, as well as Gloves and Bracers for me. They all had the same stats apart from the Cuirass which provided more Hit Points and even bumped our Constitution scores by one, for a bit of extra Health.

Poor Leather Cuirass

Leather Armour (M) Damage Mitigation: Low HP +40 CON +1 Durability: 10/10

 

Poor Leather Pauldrons

Leather Armour (M) Damage Mitigation: Low HP +20 Durability: 10/10

 

I was going to change out the boots too except Quixbix interjected with a suggestion for an item his previous owners had always found useful.

Red Jasper Amulet

This amulet when worn extends the armour mitigation of any helm or headwear to any exposed part of the head and neck area. Has no effect if no armour item is equipped on the head. Durability: 10/10

 

It was an excellent suggestion of his. During the couple of combats we had earlier in the day I took advantage of the Action mode Quixbix enabled to analyse the battle logs for more information on how the damage was determined.

Hits to the head and neck were always multiplied by four. If the area was unarmoured then there was a further multiplication by two which was applied separately effectively making the increase times eight. Should the target also be unaware of the attacker it would be doubled again to times sixteen.

Our leather helms offered low mitigation which fully negated the unarmoured doubling. These amulets meant if we were struck in the face or neck not covered by the Leather Helm, then the damage would be no worse than if we had been hit by the covered part.

It would still hurt but would be far less likely to be instantly fatal.

These amulets were fifty Gold each, and well worth it for that price in my opinion. This brought my total spending to two hundred and twenty Gold, which left me with ten Gold plus the Silver and Copper.

Quixbix, can I use the Silver and Copper to buy this stuff instead? I asked him silently.

<You can use the Currency Exchange option to change Copper to Silver and Silver to Gold if you wish. Be warned, though. If you make handshake exchanges you need the correct value. The Framework doesn’t convert or give change. So, keeping a few hundred of each is advisable> he explained.

What the hell is a handshake exchange?

<Oh yeah, if you want to give other people some of your coin you can grip their hand or other appendage and transfer the coin from sheet to sheet. Alternatively, you can use the Currency Exchange option to create physical coins to carry with you if that is your preference. Creating physical coinage is the only way to store it somewhere that isn’t on your sheet. It’s not much of an issue currently as you are unlikely to meet any roguish types sufficiently skilled to pilfer straight from your sheet, but later you will likely want to fill a few chests with your booty for safekeeping> he answered.

Huh, makes sense I suppose. I will hang on to two hundred Silver and Copper and convert the rest. When that is complete, I think I’m done here. I informed him.

<You may wish to avail yourself of some Health and Mana pellets> Quixbix advised.

Pellets, not potions? I queried.

<Yes pellets. Much easier just to pop one in your mouth than try and open a potion bottle mid-battle and swallow it> he explained.

Fair point.

It didn’t take long to find the pellets. Fifty Hit Point or Mana pellets were ten Gold each and those were the cheapest available. Converting most of my spare change gave me enough for two Health and one Mana pellet.

I confirmed my choices, the funds and items were transferred. I stepped away from the black obelisk. Shana was having a conversation with an older woman who I hadn’t noticed. As I approached, they nodded to one another and the woman hustled away quickly, not even glancing in my direction.

“What was that about?” I asked her.

“I was just asking her what had happened here and why it was so quiet,” Shana said.

“Good thinking, find out anything helpful?” I inquired.

“Not really helpful, but informative. So, it turns out the local sheriff lives in Owosso. Basically, he and his deputies left in that direction on foot yesterday evening. When people found out a bunch of them followed him that way but more packed up overnight and went south to Lansing this morning, a couple of thousand at least she said. There was a bit of looting during the night and a few gunshots, probably fired at the looters,” Shana related.

I grunted at that. “Well, we didn’t see any evidence of a massacre on the road from Owosso, so they either made it or holed up at Ovid overnight before finishing the trek in the morning.”

Ovid was another small town between Owosso and St Johns. Unlike most of the other small settlements, it was just off the M-21 and we didn’t ride through it.

“I’ve sent you some fresh gear, we’ll be better protected now.” I continued. “You were right about how quickly we made it here. I think even stopping occasionally to pick up what we can from the houses along the way, we should reach Fowler by four o’clock easy. We should definitely press onward from there.”

With one last visual sweep of the street, we were on our way.

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