Chapter 40: Into The Swamp

Using Zach’s extensive knowledge of the bus route, they were able to go downtown to a strip mall of pawn shops. Just like in Placerville, many of those pawn shops had started side businesses selling mana crystals and lower-level dungeon drops.

Thomas didn’t see any magical armor, but one particularly shady shop did have Kevlar vests. He didn’t know if they were the real deal, but it was better than broken ribs. Plus, they looked a little badass.

He and Zach both got one, and he did his awkward best guess on Jo’s size.

It was harder and harder to find healing crystals for sale. It seemed the word was getting out, and anybody with anything remotely chronic was heading to the dungeons and then buying a Healing crystal fix. Thomas didn’t blame them, but it made it inconvenient for divers.

However, healing potions were on the cheaper side and more plentiful.

“How effective are these?” Thomas asked, worried that the prices were too good to be true. Some of the “healing potions” were going for $50 a pop.

The shopkeeper squinted. “From what I understand, they won’t save you if you’re on the verge of death, but they will knock out a cold just fine. Of course, you have to have visited a dungeon in the past for it to be effective.”

“What about for injuries?” He asked bluntly. “I’m a dungeon diver.”

It felt good to say that, actually. He didn’t think that he had before.

The man regarded him with a little more seriousness. “In that case, you probably want the stronger ones. You’re looking at the D grades at that price. Now the C grades over here,” he pointed to a cabinet with smaller vials, but the potion looked more intensely rosy red. “They’ll be $100 and will fix most soft-flesh injuries. B grade will heal broken bones, but for critical injuries you’ll still want a good healing stone or a healer on your team.”

“Got any level two Healing crystals?” Thomas asked, hopefully. It had been ‘no’ across the board so far, but he had to keep looking.

“Or Adaptation?” Zach added from across the shop where he was looking at guitars.

The shopkeeper shook his head. “No to both. If you find a stash of something like that, feel free to bring it here. I’ll give you the best prices in town.”

Considering the greasy, dingy state of the shop and the fact that all the owners had claimed to have the best prices in town, Thomas sort of doubted it. But he still remained polite to the guy and bought a stash of potions.

Prepping for this dungeon dive was getting expensive. Luckily, he had just the Gift to make up for it.

As they had decided to sneak into the dungeon at night and Jo said she’d pick them up in the evening, they had some time to kill.

There was a park nearby, and Zach wandered off to meditate. Meanwhile, Thomas picked up his phone and started an intense series of text messages to his friends and his oldest brother, Pete, warning them about what would happen if none of them delved a dungeon before System integration in five months.

What he got back was fairly disheartening. A few people left him on read, and he got disbelief and pushback from nearly everybody else.

Get off TikTok, it’s rotting your brain.

I’m nearly forty years old. I got kids. I’m not messing around with dungeons.

LMAO You sound like you’re trying to sell me on some multi-level marketing scheme.

That last text was from his eldest brother, Pete, and Thomas was actually surprised to hear from him. Pete was working up in Alaska and was often out of cell phone service, or at least he claimed to be.

Thomas took a chance and placed a phone call. To his continuing surprise, Pete picked up.

“Hey Tommy, how’s tricks?”

“Don’t call Derek ‘tricks’,” Thomas said, and heard his brother laugh.

“I heard he packed up his kids and decided to mooch off you,” Pete said. “How’s that going?”

Thomas sighed. “Derek’s being…Derek. He thinks he knows how to run my life even though he can’t run his own. Nothing’s changed.”

“And now I notice you’re giving your own advice,” Pete said, and there was a slight edge to his voice.

He grew serious. “Like I said in the text, this System thing isn’t voluntary. I’m not saying you need to go full-time as a dungeon diver or anything. I’m saying, within the next five months or sooner, get your ass into a little level one dungeon and kill a monster. Do it before the countdown runs out in case something happens.”

Pete was silent for a moment. “What do you mean, if something happens?”

“Things are getting dangerous in the cities,” Thomas thought for a second, then admitted, “I was almost robbed on the highway getting back into town the other day, and part of Sacramento was on fire. How is it in Alaska?”

“Ain’t no one in this neck of the woods except oil drillers, and they all hate me,” Pete said with relish. He was also employed by various oil companies but on the environmental regulation side. He went around basically telling people to stop work because they might ruin the habitat of the rare arctic lizard or whatever. It did not make him popular with the roughnecks.

Something occurred to Thomas that hadn’t before, and he felt his blood run cold.

Alaska was easy to ignore, and in fact, there were plenty of maps that, for some reason, put it dangling next to Hawaii. But the truth was Alaska was stupid huge. Like, the land mass was a fifth of the size of the rest of the United States. It was attached to Canada, which had vast tracts of sparsely populated land to the north.

Point was, that was a lot of land to have a dungeon set every 10 square miles.

“Pete,” he said, with a calmness he didn’t feel, “I think you need to get out of Alaska.”

“No way am I coming back to Tahoe.”

“I’m not saying that,” Thomas added quickly. “I know how our family is.” After all, his own brother had moved into his apartment. They could be overbearing even with the best intentions. “But there’s already been some overflow events, meaning older dungeons have vomited up monsters. There has to be a lot of dungeons out there in the bush.”

“I don’t know, Tommy,” Pete said. “This is all crazy stuff. Half the guys here think the message in the sky is AI or Starlink trolling people or something.”

“That’s not even how AI works–”

“Look, you’re breaking up.” Pete sounded tired. “I should go.”

The line was crystal clear on both ends, and Thomas knew that Pete was just annoyed with the conversation. He had hard boundaries with his family, which Thomas tried to respect and even admired him for, but this was important. “Pete,” he said, speaking quickly. He had to get this out now, or never. “You know I’m not like Derek. I’ve never told you how to live your life, and I’m not doing that now. I am warning you that things in the lower 48 are going downhill, which means help might not arrive in your area if you need it. I also know for a fact that if you don’t enter the dungeon and unlock your Gift, it’ll eventually make you, and you won’t like the consequences. And yes, I’m hearing myself and I know I sound like a conspiracy theorist, but please just… just trust me. I’ve never asked you to take my word like this before. Pete? Hello?”

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There was silence on the other end, and Thomas looked at his phone, wondering if Pete had already hung up. He wouldn’t put it past him, but the little timer was still clicking over.

Finally, Pete said, “Okay, I’ll think about it. Take care of yourself. Send my love to Mom and Dad.”

And then he hung up.

Thomas let out a breath. That had gone honestly better than he would have thought. Pete was squirrely at the best of times. He refused to be pinned down, and he did not like to be told what to do, but he had stayed on the line to listen… which probably meant he had seen a thing or two up there in the Alaskan woods that had spooked him.

Well, that was one brother taken care of. As for his more reluctant friends… well, he’d work on them. He did have five months.

****

To his mild surprise and intense relief, Jo actually arrived when she said she would. She was driving a big Ford F-250 that looked like it had seen better…decades. It was a beast of a truck, and by the scratches on the sides and the mud halfway up the frame, it went off-roading quite a lot.

Jo caught Thomas looking and smiled. “It’s my ex-husband’s truck,” and the amount of unsaid could probably fill novels.

“Thanks for picking us up,” Thomas said. “This is Zach. I’ve done a few dungeons with him, and he knows what he’s doing with fire.”

Zach waved, and Jo nodded to him, though she threw a smile in Thomas’s direction. “No gangsters in those dungeons, I hope, or this one neither?”

“Not that I know of,” he replied, “but there might be a few complications. I’ll tell you on the way up.”

“Where are we going anyway?”

At that, Thomas looked at Zach, who was also giving the truck an assessing look.