RD 5 Ch 41

It didn’t take Gloria and I long to find a place to eat. Everybody nearby who had checked our skill sheets was more than happy to help us in any way possible. They practically offered their firstborn child when I asked a question.

Taking a few suggestions and following their directions, we’d made our way to a restaurant. We were seated at a window table in a small restaurant built into the long town between the Citadel and Vein City.

The chair was a little too small for me at this point and the owner had been kind enough to bring a second.

I felt much like I assumed animals at the zoo had felt once upon a time. We were like a polar bear, an apex predator, forced to sit as people walked by, gawked and pointed at. A few had concerned friends or parents aware enough to give them looks that told them to stop staring.

When many of them actually processed the risk sitting nearby, they would move with a sudden agility. No one was so bold as to use an ability to race away, but I had a feeling a few had considered it, given the look on their faces.

Gloria pulled my attention back to her. “What do you think about the menu?”

“Ah, yes,” I said. “Would you like corn, soy, or chicken? Oh, they do have eggs.”

Gloria rolled her eyes. “I know it isn’t exactly a massive variety, but they do their best. Places like this try really hard to make it tasty. You wouldn’t believe how hard they fight to get salt brought in to be able to use in their cooking.”

“Oh, I can imagine.” My mind drifted back to years in my past life. “Most people hear about how valuable salt used to be, but they don’t understand it until salt is actually hard to find and food starts to spoil. Thankfully it’s not as bad as it was historically, because spatial rings provide a workaround. Still, we’re all pretty hooked on salt. It’s a necessary part of a diet.”

Gloria laughed, though I had a feeling it was a bit forced to appear less intense to a young kid currently staring at us.

Gloria looked over at me after the child’s mother dragged him away. “Try not to scare the kids,” she said, waving a hand towards the smile on her face. “Laugh a little. Otherwise that completely ruins the purpose of what we’re doing.”

“What? I’m not that scary,” I protested.

Gloria raised an eyebrow. “Do you realize simply seeing your stats is, in its own way, quite terrifying?”

“Really? I mean, they’re just stats. If anything, it should be comforting. I can easily protect this area.” I shrugged.

“But your stats are the equivalent of staring down a bazooka or a powerful monster in the wild. Everyone here can take one look at your stats and begin to extrapolate what that actually means in killing potential. Most of them have fought monsters or other people by this point. They’ve gotten a feeling for what 200, 400, perhaps even 1,000 strength actually means. Then they look at you and realize that person who hit them with 1,000 strength once and literally sent them flying, or watched someone pick up a car and toss it like a stuffed animal, and they understand you could rip any of them apart.”

“Huh. So I’m not the polar bear behind the glass. They all see me as the polar bear who got out of the exhibit.” I nodded.

Gloria frowned slightly at my interpretation. “Why are you a polar bear? You’re not that hairy.”

“Tell Simone that next time it’s her turn to clean the bathroom,” I shot back.

Gloria chuckled. “Simone doesn’t clean the bathroom, Bran. I guarantee one of the Mul Branova does that for her, probably hoping they can scrape something off the floor.” She muttered the last under her breath, but it was loud enough for me to hear.

“What are they scraping off the floor?” I pressed, smirking a little.

“Oh, nothing. Just enjoy everything Simone does for you. She seems extra happy since you got back.” Gloria added.

I grinned. “Well, I told you in the trial, she didn’t even recognize me at first. It kind of hurt honestly. But I think she got a small dose of what it would all look like if something happened to me. In a way, it’s like we both got a new perspective.”

“Well, I’m glad you at least got a new appreciation for all of us out of the trial.” Gloria hummed and nodded.

“I have known how lucky I am and how important you all are to me for a while, but there’s always something that makes it more real to experience that loss. Each and every one of you is utterly invaluable to me.” I gestured vaguely and spoke loud enough that the restaurant, which was now rapidly filling thanks to our presence, would spawn plenty of rumors.

“Oh, don’t stop now. Please continue.” Gloria smiled.

“I’ll repeat it as often as you like, and for whoever you wish. Without you ladies there would be no Citadel of Blood, no revival project for Vein City, and certainly not all of the smiling faces we see around us.” I nodded toward the window. “So, if anyone gets stupid ideas of coming after those close to me, I would absolutely rip the world apart to find and destroy them.”

Gloria chuckled. “Don’t make me too important or someone is going to come after me just to make you mad. You do have enemies.”

I waved a hand. “Enemies who would be absolute cowards to go after the people in my cities. Besides, what would that accomplish besides pissing me off and ensuring their deaths come that much faster?” My thoughts flicked to Vidar and his attack on the Mul Branova fortress in Europe. He would pay for that as soon as I could find him.

Gloria put a hand over mine and leaned across the table. “You’re not very good at hiding your anger. Don’t scare the children,” she said, a twinkle in her eye; her earrings caught the light and gave her an extra sparkle.

“I’ll try to stop scaring the children. It’s hard with a face like mine.” I grinned.

“It’s a little rugged, sure,” she admitted. “It might not be everyone’s taste, but don’t let anyone convince you you don’t have a face for movies. You certainly don’t have a face for radio.”

I laughed. “Now that’s just a rude thing to say about anyone.”

Gloria shrugged. “Sometimes the truth hurts most of all.”

“So,” I said, “if you weren’t following me around trying to piss off demons and finish a war, what would you be doing right about now? Apocalypse and everything.”

“With the apocalypse still going on?” she asked, amused.

“Yeah. I want to ask a fun question, but we should at least live in reality.” I answered.

She hummed and thought. “I’d probably still be working for my father, especially if my older brother hadn’t made the move he had against me. Of course, you saved me from that, Bran, and I have not forgotten. People like me and my family don’t forget favors.”

“Don’t be too indebted to me,” I said. “I think you paid off most of those debts when you put up with my initial training. Do you remember when I had you train, toughen your body, and stand in front of those giants and get hammered?”

Gloria growled at the memory. “Still, if you hadn’t at least done that for me, I’m not sure I would have survived your father’s training.”

I nodded, cringing a little bit at the mention of my father. I would need to check in on him and my mother at some point, but there was too much going on at the moment.

“Well, it takes a lot of work to put up with that kind of training. But ultimately, I think it’s rather necessary to go anywhere as an initiated. Grinding in the instances is an option, but it’s hard to really do what’s necessary to progress far enough. Gaining skills early is required to have protection as anything goes wrong, which will certainly happen at some point in this new world.” Gloria stated.

I nodded. “My father knows that too. It’s a common Borrson ideology to train brutally before you need it. And while I might say the Borrsons take the idea of training to extremes. Among the clans, they still have the better odds of surviving.” I looked up at Gloria. “But don’t think I am so easily distracted away from getting an answer to my question. What would you be doing if I weren’t here?” I pressed.

She hesitated. “Probably taking over my father’s role if you weren’t here, and by extension, the Mul Branova. Vein City would probably be free real estate for the Nesters. And if I was this strong ahead of so much of my family, it would be relatively easy for me to run roughshod over them and take control.”

“You’d do that?” I asked.

Gloria had a distant look on her face. “Probably. It doesn’t sound very friendly, I know. But I don’t know if I’d much care if you hadn’t opened my eyes to the larger conflict at play with the demons. I would probably still be anchored into the family conflict, trying to win those battles.”

“You really think so?” I asked.

“Almost certain,” she said. “If it wasn’t for you, I would still be fighting my brother for every scrap, for every inch of land, for every street in Vein City. There’s been serious pressure placed on all of us to keep fighting for spots in the family. Every uncle and old man in the mob is watching, picking who they’ll support with their personal or organizational strength. Before the system, it was our job to collect as much of that as possible. If I was this far ahead of everyone else, it would be all too easy, and perhaps too tempting, for me to simply step forward and grab what I’d always been told added up to my worth.”

“It sounds like Carmen raised a pack of wolves rather than a family,” I commented.

Gloria winced. “You’re not entirely wrong. He did, more than he’d like to admit. As much as father likes to talk about family, he ended up creating enough competition that my brother tried to brainwash, frame, and kill me.”

“At least that’s in the past.” I reminded her.

“Thanks to you. So, what about you?” she asked. “If you weren’t trying to fight demons, what would you be doing?”

“Well, that’s easier, because I already lived that life once. Around this time I was working for Bobby. We were doing simple things: mostly clearing out surrounding resources and bringing them back for a Nester boss or whoever had given us the job to squirrel away more resources."

“That does sound like the family,” Gloria said, “especially if they were in their old state, just trying to out-compete one another. Tell me, which life do you prefer?” Gloria leaned forward at that question. It seemed casual, but I could feel an undertone beneath it; in a sense she was asking me, was this all worth it?

“I think life was simpler then,” I admitted. “Yet it’s almost impossible for me to say it was better, even if I was ignorant of the danger and it felt better because of that. That’s no way to base my preference on. I know instead I’d have to say this life is better. I’m working toward something that will make a difference.”

I leaned towards her, drawn into her eyes. “In my past life I was constantly trying to recover, whether it was the financial damage from my mother’s hospitalization or the debts I owed the Dags, then the Nesters. Eventually I went to the war against the demons, not really to solve anything, but to run away from watching those I had known and loved die before me.”

Gloria tilted her head. “You never mentioned how you got involved in the first demon war at large. I guess I always assumed the demons simply came for everyone and you were caught up in that.”

“Nah. A group of high-levels eventually came through the area recruiting, trying to get anyone with enough levels so they didn’t have to babysit them. They asked people to join their group, roam the country, and hunt demons. That group later grew and merged with other factions that’d decided the only way to make the demons go away for good was to kill them all.”

Gloria listened with narrowed eyes. “And eventually you did.”

“And eventually we did,” I echoed. “Only we ended up stuck in Europe without the foggiest idea of what to do next. I went back home and found Vein City even worse off than before. More and more people struggled, but the Nesters were at least still around: Bobby and your father were still there. I fell back into that life, not because I wanted to, but because it was familiar, simple, and easy. It’s one of the ways I learned the simple truth that people, myself included, will gravitate to the easy and familiar answer if given the option. It’s why finding people who are willing to push, like you, can be so hard. It’s simply not in human nature.”

Gloria smiled. “That’s very sweet of you to say. But have you ever thought that we aren’t really human anymore?”

I groaned. This was an old argument for me. “You’re going to say that with all of these stats, we are something different now? My take is it’s not an easy answer. We’re still human in thought, opinion, and soul. But no, we aren’t the same creatures that evolved whose greatest asset was toolmaking and mimicry. We’re part of the system now. That comes with a whole host of different challenges to define us: different talents and different ways we interact with nearly everything in the world.”

I gazed out, watching everyone stare at us as they walked by. “But if you look at them, would you call them anything else?” I asked, nodding towards the passing people.

“I guess not.” Gloria leaned forward, her hand on her chin.

“But sometimes you like to think, to imagine, that the world is changing at such a fundamental level that perhaps we could get past the bad parts of humanity too?” I guessed.

“Yeah, something like that,” Gloria said wistfully. “Mostly, I think I crave change at this juncture, which is wild to say, considering everything that has changed in the last few years and how rapid the change hit the two of us, especially with the vault. But I find myself impatient for what comes next. Some part of me wishes for a defining line to mark the end of one era and the beginning of the next. But perhaps it never comes quite so cleanly, then, does it?”

“No.” I shook my head. “I don’t think it’ll ever come so cleanly, but I do think, in retrospect, that it’s far easier to define those moments.”

Gloria reached across the table and held my hand, a smile playing across her lips. “I think we’ll look back on this time fondly. At least I know I will.”