Chapter 96: Book 2: Chapter 1

Day 7

Soon we were back aboard the Marena’s Mercy. The ship cut through the blue of the lake water with barely any discernible wake left behind us. There was a gentle southerly breeze that caught the black sails and helped propel the ship forward, allowing Anastasia to conserve a little more of her available dungeon energy.

After reuniting Sarah with her stepmother, I left the other captives and youngsters under Jackson’s watchful eye and attended to a much-needed cleaning of my gunk-covered body. Shana happily volunteered to join me in our bathing facilities to make sure we cleansed every nook and cranny.

I’m not going to lie; this may have extended the showering time by a hefty amount. So much so that we had been docked in the bay of Stormblade Harbour for a good half hour before we emerged from the en-suite bathing area and hastily donned our clothing and armour.

<We have made port. Nobody has disembarked from the ship yet. I have a few updates for you if you want to go through them before joining the rest of the crew and our ‘guests’> Quixbix said as Shana and I finished dressing.

“Sure, let’s get that out of the way first.”

<First off, the booty you gained from this excursion is less than five thousand gold, so you won’t get a lesser act of piracy. Quest rewards are not included in the calculation, only what you got from looting the Capronids and the living chattel who are waiting to beg for their freedom in the cabin on the deck above. The good news is I’m awesome and can finagle the books. What we’ve earned will roll over to the next excursion rather than be accounted for right now.>

Shana rolled her eyes at the imp’s wanton self-congratulation.

I smiled my agreement. “Thanks, Quix. Would you be able to do that if we had been over five thousand?”

<Naturally> Quixbix responded smugly. <This is merely one of the multitude of services I provide that you benefit from. Corsairs without imps often end up wasting their raiding when they are forced to make port without hitting their intended threshold.>

“Excellent,” I enthused and winked at Shana. “I’ll make sure you get double helpings of dessert!”

<As you should> the imp started. <Wait! But I don’t eat.>

“Really?” I exclaimed in mock surprise. “That’s a shame I guess we’ll have to eat it on your behalf. Don’t worry, we’ll be sure to let you know how scrummy it tastes.”

<Very funny. Not> he groused.

Shana got up from the large eight-poster bed and sat down at the ornate ivory inlaid dressing table. She picked up a matching hairbrush and started pulling it through her long, dark, hair. Smoothing out the few tangles that had developed during our pleasurable interlude.

“Anything else?” I prompted the imp when it became clear he was sulking and wasn’t going to continue of his own volition.

<Yes, several things actually. The Lucky Goat’s Hoof activated when we returned to the environs of Stormblade Harbour.>

The hoof had been an item I’d received as part of the quest for destroying the nascent blood shrine to Carnax. I’d forgotten all about it during the hurly-burly of the last hour.

“What does that mean?” I asked him, wary suspicion edging the pitch of my voice up half an octave.

<Nothing bad. The hoof is a single-use item that can be used by a settlement owner to improve the facilities in their settlement. Usually, you get to choose when and which settlement to use it on, but it would appear your patron goddess got a touch impatient and made the choice to activate it for you.>

“Fucking Nora,” I sighed. “Do I at least get a say in how it improves Stormblade Harbour?”

<Nope,> Quixbix laughed. <But that isn’t because of the Shattered Goddess all she did was activate it. Anything associated with luck never lets you choose, it’s always random, or at least it’s supposed to appear random if you know what I mean.

<Anyway, to save you any further furrowed brows the hoof tried to upgrade the Slave Market. As that building was already a capital grade building and couldn’t be enlarged any further, it then attempted to make it the Prime market, which again, it already was, so instead the Slave Market has been granted a variety of useful add-ons for free.>

 “The Slave Market, eh?” I said as I stood up from my seated position on the bed. “Once again, it feels like I’m being pushed in certain directions.”

<Perhaps,> the imp said, but his tone was laden with doubt and disagreement. <Although out of all the ‘civilised’ spawned mobs, the cloven-hoofed are one of the most renowned for engaging in slaving. Even if they do it mostly to feed their ghastly shrines. Therefore, it does make sense that the prize for destroying their budding enclave is an enhancement to associated facilities.>

Only in the crazy fucked up place the world had become would that make sense to anybody.

Intuiting my feelings of the subject Quixbix continued. <Like I said these luck-based upgrade items aren’t half as random as their description suggests. And I’m just realising that probably isn’t going to help convince you that you aren’t being guided against your wishes.>

I walked over to Shana, she turned her head at my approach and wordlessly offered me the brush along with a winsome smile. That smile should be labelled a weapon of mass destruction and I gladly surrendered to its whims.

Shana shifted down the white cushioned stool giving me enough room. I sat down behind her and applied the brush to her glossy tresses. None of my previous girlfriends had trusted me to brush their hair. I found the action to be pleasantly soothing and any rancour about being pulled every which way by powerful forces slipped away in the simple, yet intimate, action.

It is what it is, I thought. That had become something of an overused phrase in the last few years, but it unerringly fit the bill for this situation.

“Very well. Is there anything I should know about straight away?” I interrogated the imp as the brushwork calmed me down.

Maybe it wasn’t entirely the brushing that soothed me but a tacit acceptance that for better or worse I was mixed up with powerful forces. I could swim against the current and exhaust myself going nowhere or go with the flow, accelerate downstream, and see what fresh opportunities awaited me at the other end.

<You took that better than expected,> Quixbix joked and then went on when I rolled my eyes upwards. <Most of it will only be useful later. You did get an Advanced Feed Purifier which will be useful when the pens begin to fill. You can put in normally inedible plants or rotten meat and using the market’s mana it will turn it into an edible nutritional paste that most living creatures can consume.

<The taste is less than appetising but it’s a cheap way to feed your property if you don’t want the expense of providing real meals. Most sensible towns end up buying something similar to keep their citizens alive during times of scarcity or siege.

<Raiders like yourself rarely have to rely on such emergency fallbacks but it’s good to have without having to stump up the money. And if anybody gets out of hand you can always put them on paste rations as a punishment.

<However, the standout item is a harmonic transmitter installed in the Slave Market’s plexus connector. It only comes with a dozen harmonic nodes, but we can buy more of those later if we need them.>

“Quixbix, I think you’re going to have to explain what those are,” Shana giggled, as we exchanged a knowing glance at the imp’s bubbly exuberance.

<Of course, of course. The harmonic transmitter allows you to tap into the slave market’s plexus connector remotely using the nodes. The plexus is the magical connective network linking the Darkwyrlds that is both created and governed by the Framework. It’s part of how inventories work, the big gateway in the bay, and the exchange facilities between podiums and markets.

<You know how I told you that slaves sold directly to a podium will appear in the holding pens of your slave market, right?>

“Yes, I recall,” I answered. “It’s because we are the prime market for Earth.”

<Right. That instant transportation is possible because of the plexus network. Once we attune the harmonic nodes they can be fused to a cell, any cell, anywhere in the Darkwyrlds. It must be a cell as that is what the harmonic transmitter is hooked up to in the slave market. Then you can use the node to transport whoever is in that cell directly to the holding pens of our slave market here in Stormblade Harbour, just as if they had been sold to a podium.>

“Alright,” Shana said and took the brush from me, and put it on the dressing table. “Why is that such a big deal?”

<Well, the holding pens here can hold thousands of captives. Marena’s Mercy, on the other hand, currently only has space for a couple of hundred in the brig if you really squeezed them in. We are planning on completely emptying the four prisons in Ionia, aren’t we?>

Although I had come up with the grand plan of visiting the four correctional facilities just outside of Ionia to build my crew, Quixbix’s words exposed a facet of my planning I hadn’t given due consideration. Namely, the scale of what we would find there and how to deal with it.

“That is, well, that is a very good point, Quix,” I commended him. Shana nodded her agreement.

I had a vague familiarity with how many Americans were incarcerated and that it was a large number. Four facilities, even if they averaged a few hundred inmates each would be almost a thousand people. I would need to query this with Jackson, but I suspected it would be a lot more than that, probably closer to three or four thousand.

Many of the prisoners would be unsuitable or untrustworthy to take on as crewmates and the Canon limited how many I could add anyway. But there would be uses for the others and most importantly I couldn’t afford to leave them for Luca to incorporate into his forces later.

This upgrade provided a solution to a problem I hadn’t known I had.

Maybe Quixbix wasn’t blowing smoke up my ass by being doubtful that the push down the path of the slaver was unnecessary or had a nefarious purpose other than helping me survive.

Without this facility, I’d have faced the prospect of having to murder the excess prisoner population on site. That possibility didn’t trouble me as much as you might think. There would be a fair few of them who had that fate waiting in store for them anyway, but I did baulk at the potential waste of resources.

Sex offenders, supremacists, and other irredeemable bottom-feeders were all going in the dungeon and by that, I meant as food for Anastasia’s growth, not continued imprisonment.

However, her dungeon could only support three instances at a time and that limited how many unsavoury types we could stuff in at a time. On top of that, we had to provide them with some functional weapons and armour before sending them in.

Anastasia could only disable the retreat option for characters if they were suitably prepared for a dungeon run. A safety feature in case the unarmed and helpless wandered in by accident, and a feature that couldn’t be overruled. We had to be thankful that mobs were considered suitably prepared by default, otherwise, the loincloth-clad lesser Fomorians she polished off could have walked back out.

And as the last thing we wanted was any of these prisoners making it to the end, we’d want to break them up into smaller groups. All these factors meant it would take time to process them, especially if they dragged their feet once they were inside.

They could delay moving forward in any chamber they cleared. Anastasia could collapse the room and force them deeper eventually, but there was always a randomised period of grace, between thirty minutes and two hours, they had to be granted by Framework regulations.

Depending on how many of them proved to be dungeon-chow level of scumbaggery, it could take weeks to process them all. We couldn’t afford to be docked outside the prisons for that length of time. There was far too much that needed doing.

The harmonic nodes meant we could empty all four facilities in a day and not waste any opportunities for the dungeon’s advancement.

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“You said there were several things to address?” I said.

<Indeed. You have two new follow-on quests.>

Storm’s Reach 2 (K)

Expand the security and reach of your fledgling faction.

Success: Secure ownership for the entirety of Beaver Island archipelago.

Rewards: 3,400 XP, +10 faction influence, and future Storm’s Reach quests.

Failure: If this quest goes incomplete the rest of this quest chain will remain locked and unavailable.

And.

Culling the Cloven-Hoofed 3 (K)

You have cleansed your territory and made an enemy of the cult of Carnax in the process. What you discovered was but a minor scouting incursion. Locate the primary spawning grounds of the Hooved Horde.

Success: Identify where the spawning crystals for the monsters that make up the Hooved Horde have been sited.

Rewards: 3,400 XP and future quests in the chain.

Failure: If this quest goes incomplete the rest of this quest chain will remain locked and unavailable.

I scanned through the quests quickly. The culling quest was fairly predictable and followed the general trend I’d observed in the various chain quests I’d received. However, the Storm’s Reach quest was a bit of a curiosity for two reasons.

I got up from the white stool and helped Shana to her feet. “Quix, I don’t get it. Don’t I own the rest of the archipelago already? It was part of my deal with the governor and the other islands are uninhabited. Shouldn’t this be an auto-complete job?”

<The islands are indeed legally yours and with no contestation from any characters or factions. Yet, the quest remains incomplete. Why? I can’t say for sure, maybe it has something to do with the third quest chain you’re due from founding Stormblade Harbour which hasn’t been revealed yet.>

“I guess we’ll have to make landfall on them and find out. That can wait until we’ve finished the mission to Ionia, though. And what’s with this plus ten faction influence?”

<Oh, yeah, we’ve not really had a reason to assess the Shattered Storm’s influence, have we. There will be a Strategic Command office similar to the navigation chamber on the ship dedicated to tracking where you stand in relation to other known factions in your palace-fortress somewhere.

<You don’t get anything for having more influence, it’s just a measure of the strength and reach of your faction compared to others. I’m not even sure why it’s listed as a reward. It always goes up a bit anyway when you claim more territory. I would’ve covered this later but it’s not important until things settle down and the plexus pathways to the rest of the Darkwyrlds open.>

I opened my mouth to point out this would be handy to keep tabs on Luca’s progression when I was pre-empted by my imp.

<Wait, now that I think about it. Ten is far too much influence for incorporating those islands.>

“So, it is a reward then?” Shana queried.

<It can’t be. You can’t gift influence like that, it just doesn’t work that way. The rest of the archipelago is only worth a handful of points, three at most and that’s pushing it. There must be something…Dungeons. There must be a bunch of dungeons on the islands, that’s the only reasonable explanation. Torin, you should use your dungeon sense.>

This was a good idea. I plonked my butt back down on the stool. I hadn’t refreshed the data since we reached the islands or since I had made level five, but I remembered how disorienting it had been when I’d performed the search a couple of times in the past.

I settled myself, opened my senses, and activated the ability. There was the same swirling inrush of confusing information that hit me like a freight train. Shana steadied me by gripping my shoulders and rubbing them gently until the moment of discombobulation passed.

Quixbix overlaid the summary of the results in my vision.

Dungeon Scan radius is 100 miles.

Dungeons Located: 61

Average level: 14

Unconquered Dungeons: 56

Successfully Marked Dungeons: 20

<Filter, Torin. You forgot to filter again> Quixbix chuckled.

“What kind of filter did you have in mind?” I sighed.

<Cut your scan radius to twenty-five miles. That will cover the archipelago without contaminating the results with what is on the mainland on either side.>

Shaking my head, I refocused and repeated the process this time applying a reduction on how far I wanted my sense to range. Shana wasn’t needed to keep me upright this time, but I appreciated her comforting presence, nonetheless.

Dungeon Scan radius is 25 miles.

Dungeons Located: 17

Average level: 11

Unconquered Dungeons: 17

Successfully Marked Dungeons: 11

<That’s more like it> Quixbix enthused. <Eleven marked dungeons and all reasonably low level, very nice. I’ll send all the details to Navigation and your Strategic Command office in the palace. These will be very useful for building up the strength of your minions.>

I opened the second tab with the marked dungeons information and scanned through the contents quickly.

Surprisingly, two of the eleven marked dungeons were on Beaver Island. Then there was one each on North Fox, South Fox, Gull, High, Trout, Whisky, Squaw, Garden and Hog Islands. All these dungeons were level ten or under. Ten being the highest level of dungeon I could accurately mark the location of with my current character level of five.

Even more surprisingly, or perhaps not given my recent experiences, both marked dungeons on Beaver Island were level one and had very human names. Grace Nguyen and Alfred Willis. What were the chances they were named after grave markers? I had to chuckle to myself at the thought, these were definitely former people.

That still left six dungeons unmarked.

“Where do you think the six unmarked dungeons are, Quix?” I asked him.

<Hmmm, good question. Seventeen in such close proximity is unusual, especially when you factor in a lot of that twenty-five-mile radius is water. Beaver Island isn’t large enough to have more than another two, there still has to be a minimum distance between them. So, presumably, some or all the larger islands in the archipelago have two apiece.>

“If I’m understanding this correctly,” Shana mused. “Then the Shattered Storm would receive roughly one influence for every two dungeons under its control. Is that correct?”

<It varies a little depending on the level and difficulty of the dungeon, but half a point per dungeon is the norm.>

“Why do they contribute influence at all?” Shana followed up.

<They are the most reliable method for collecting upgrade points, which you need if you want to grow truly strong. Factions tend to limit access to dungeons under their control for this reason. Either to deny their rivals or to charge fees for entry. Earth is already an extreme outlier with double the number of dungeons and this small island group probably has five maybe six times as many as it ought to have on top of that.

<Before you start tutting, I don’t think this is Dean-centric shenanigans. Dungeons, like spawning crystals, aren’t supposed to be sited near population centres. But they do need to be accessible, otherwise they can’t grow. Which is why you won’t find any underwater. This island group had a low number of people, while at the same time not being a lifeless rock in the middle of an ocean hundreds of miles away from civilisation. Any similar island groupings will likely have a similar density of dungeon resources.>

I chuckled lightly to myself. “What are the chances you think that Regina won’t assume I knew this already when I cut a deal for ownership of all the state-owned islands in Michigan?”

“Not good,” Shana replied and planted a soft kiss on my lips. “But she and Governor Reynolds have their own concerns in Eastern Michigan, by the time they figure out the value of what they’ve given away it will be too late.”

“Maybe,” I replied with less confidence. “Although you are right about it being a worry for down the road, probably just as well that we are building a naval powerbase. Alright, we’ve spent enough time in here. I need to get us on the move.”

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