thedancenovel Chapter 7-14
Chapter 7-14
The Headquarters of the DG is located in Lost Angels’ District Two. At least two dozen teams of Delvers are always stationed at HQ, ready to respond to dungeons within the city itself or its nearby environs.
Depending on your personality, getting assigned to HQ can be either the fucking best or worst thing ever. Thanks to the latest and most advanced magitech, exclusively and secretly developed by the DG itself, dungeons that manifest inside LA or within a roughly fifteen-mile radius can be located near-instantly.
This means that you don’t have to fucking walk around looking for the Wasted things. You can sit around and enjoy yourself, even spend most of your days drowning your sorrows. But you had best be fucking sober when you’re on call, or your ass is gone.
- Delver’s Guild Handbook, Section 16.2 – “Guild Organization”
Shieldbreaker hardly said a word on the twenty-minute walk to the orphanage, but Haldred did enough talking for both of them. The Skirmisher seemed quite interested in how a pair of orcs had ended up at the Academy following ‘a little thing’ like me around. I objected to his terminology, which led to G’hala jumping in front of me, posing and flexing to demonstrate what ‘a big thing’ looked like.
I slugged her in the solar plexus, accomplishing absolutely nothing thanks to her barrier, then pretended I’d injured my hand on her rock-hard abs. Haldred chuckled, while his dwarven friend just marched on ahead, leaving us all behind until we ran to catch up.
We learned from Haldred that they occasionally visited the children of a former teammate at the orphanage, and were overdue for another trip. I didn’t dare inquire further, glad that my visit at least wouldn’t be tinged with sadness. The orphanage was also in Deuce, nearly against the southern wall and a bit east of the Guild.
When we approached the entrance, the gate was open. There was a muscular, scarred older man sitting in a chair in the shade of one of the buildings. At first I thought he was asleep, but as we approached, his eyes cracked open, taking us in. I thought I heard him grunt softly, then his eyes drifted closed again. Our Tier 4 companions marched right past the lazy guard, and we followed them into the courtyard.
The sounds of children playing made it obvious that we’d found the right place. Of course, the Guild logo on the gates was a bit of a giveaway too. Inside the courtyard we found dozens of kids running around screaming and laughing. Some of them were playing a game that involved kicking a ball, another group seemed to be playing tag, and the rest was pure chaos.
“AAAAZZZZZZZ!”
I heard the scream first and turned with a grin to find RaeRae hurtling towards me. Laughing, I bent down and snatched her up off the ground, whirling her around in the air with a squeal, before pulling her close for a hug. I definitely didn’t have tears in my eyes as she latched onto me with arms and legs.
“AAAZZZZ!” she screamed into my ear. “YOUR ARMOR IS TOO HARD TO HUG!”
She didn’t let go though, instead squeezing me even tighter. I gave up trying to pry her loose and started to ask her where the others were when they found me first. I knelt down so I could hug them all at once, marvelling at how good they looked. All three of them had grown, and they looked less skinny than I remembered.
Still holding RaeRae, I introduced them to the rest of my grinning Squad. I was happily surprised to see that the kids didn’t seem to be afraid of the orcs at all. Dustin was very impressed with H’ruk’s muscles, demanding that the orc bend down so he could see if he could reach all the way around H’ruk’s massive biceps. He could – just barely. With his arms, I mean, like he was hugging them.
“I wanna have muscles like that when I grow up!” he announced, cheerfully flexing his own noodle-like arms.
“Haha!” boomed the Fire Mage. “I like your attitude, young one! But only the Ironhide Clan is this formidable!” he announced, posing. Other curious children were now gathering around, and soon we were swept away by a tide of kids.
We eventually got a tour of the place, and I was very happy to see that they were far better off than we’d been back in Sunland. The kids’ room was about the same size as our old ones, with two bunk beds, and they had a small chest of drawers with their clothes as well as a little desk.
“Look, that’s my bed!” RaeRae – who I was still carrying – pointed to one of the bottom bunks. “And that’s yours!” she exclaimed, pointing to the one above it.
She burst into tears when I gently explained that I was only visiting them, and I had to repeatedly promise to come back next week before she calmed down. We stayed for lunch in their dining hall, where the food turned out to be pretty similar to what we’d eaten back at the Academy.
Afterwards, the kids demanded that we play with them, and I found myself giving RaeRae a piggyback ride around the courtyard. Then Dustin demanded one from H’ruk, and quickly discovered the orc’s mighty shoulders were so broad that he could carry two kids at a time, one on each side.
The sight of H’ruk and G’hala marching around with a pair of laughing, screaming kids on each of their shoulders – well, it was both incredibly cute and also hilarious. Other kids were fascinated by Jayce’s metal half, including one little boy with a cybernetic hand. The kids themselves came in all shapes, sizes, and colors.
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I thought a lot of them were human, but it was honestly hard to tell. Mana corruption could be inherited, and while there were a few kids that were obviously dwarves, and one that I thought was an elf, there were many that I couldn’t place. I saw kids with furry tails, scaly tails, horns, claws, unusual hair and eye colors – all running around and playing with others that looked like regular human kids.
When we finally left a few hours later, with endless hugs for my siblings, I was in the best mood I’d been in for ages. My good mood lasted all the way back to the barracks, and even seeing Tara couldn’t drag me down that day. We even managed to find a store not too far from the barracks called ‘Army Surplus’.
They sold everything from clothes to camping supplies to weapons and armor, all leftovers the Army didn’t want for some reason. The prices were good too, and I was able to pick up a couple of new-to-me shirts and some pants and shorts that actually fit reasonably well. Sure, they were all in different varieties of Army camouflage, but I thought they looked good.
I even found another pair of combat boots that fit well to replace my old boots from Sunland. Those were getting a bit tight. I sold my old boots and clothes to the store, grateful to be rid of them. I felt like a new person now that I had civilian clothes that fit again, even if they weren’t much cooler than my armor with the thermal regulation mod running.
That week I threw myself back into training with a newfound intensity. Every time I thought about relaxing I forced myself to imagine never seeing the kids again. I thought about the enormous skyscraper owned by Yuri’s family and what it meant. Then I pushed harder.
The best part was that I could almost forget about Tara. Sure, I caught myself admiring her various charms on occasion, but that was just more motivation to train. If I pushed harder, I didn’t have any energy to wonder about what might have been.
In the evenings, I worked on my Spells. I was confident I wouldn’t get much better with Fire and Slow, but I practiced them regularly so I didn’t forget them. Most of my practice time I dedicated to learning Embrittle. I hadn’t considered it before because I just didn’t know what the word meant, but after reading the description of the Spell I wished I’d learned it before Slow.
It was another debuff, like Slow, that would make whatever it was cast on more fragile and easier to break. Professor Osco confirmed that it would weaken an enemy’s defenses, so it should help me punch through heavy armor.
My practice paid off with a Level in Concentration – it turned out that trying to learn a new Spell in a quiet room by myself was much easier than doing it in a shared barracks. I also improved to Level 4 in Pistols thanks to an additional delivery of ammunition from Arlo’s parents.
My teammates definitely noticed my renewed determination, especially when I pushed them harder in everything from PT to Melee Combat. Our classes were still a bit of a mess without the school’s facilities, but we were getting used to the conditions in LA.
The one thing that pissed me off was that I still hadn’t been allowed to duel Thiago, since we didn’t have access to any fighting pits. It wouldn’t be safe for me to fight him out in the courtyard if I missed any shots with my shotgun.
Halfway through the week PAST informed me I had enough Essence for an item, which turned out to be a Level 6 self-repair mod. I semi-cheerfully applied it to my pistol, after removing the Level 0 version. I definitely appreciated the value of this simple mod far more now, but unless a monster smashed it during a fight, the Level 0 was plenty to keep it clean and running like new.
As the end of the week approached I started to notice that my relentless pace was wearing down most of my teammates. The only exception was G’hala, who seemed to be loving it. Even H’ruk shot us the occasional irritated glance or two, though he never actually complained out loud. Raylan, Zaire, and Jayce all did, however. Well, so did Tara, but fuck her. On Saturday at lunch, Raylan all but demanded that we spend some time relaxing that weekend.
I couldn’t call Jayce either his girlfriend or boyfriend, so I’d decided on ‘theyfriend’. The alternative was ‘lover’, and I just didn’t want to think about that. The cyborg gave him a smile, then turned to me.
I reminded them.
The orcs were eager to see the place as well once it was established that there would be drinks. Together, they persuaded me to take things a little easier that afternoon, and after dinner we all – minus Tara, of course – gathered in our room. We stowed away our expensive pistols and wands in our Inventories where they’d be safe after Jayce warned us that they could get stolen if we weren’t careful.
Deciding to be cautious, I put my cutlass into my Inventory as well and strapped on my old dwarven shortsword instead. If we got in another late-night brawl I wanted an option that was more dangerous than my fists and less lethal than my shotgun. At least we didn’t have Elin along this time.
We set out after dark with the Deathdealers along for the ride. The streets were busy, especially once we entered the Inner City. We had to stay alert to dodge all of the vehicles slicing between the people walking. This time we stayed on the main street all the way through the Inner City, passing between Central and Deuce and then exiting the south wall into Nine.
We were the only people passing through that gate, and as we emerged I saw that it was guarded by at least twice as many police as the north gate had been. The reason was immediately apparent as I took in the people crowding the square outside the gate. Even in the light of the mana-lamps scattered around the square, I could see that Nine was where the non-humans lived.