Chapter 183

The tunnel dumped them out in a barn just outside the city. Luke wasn’t sure exactly how many miles it ran, but it must have been an enormous expenditure to dig it. He’d be the first to admit he didn’t know much about farming, but the barn looked weird to him, too. There was something like a set of stables on one wall, but with steel cages instead of wooden stalls. Maybe that was standard practice on Aros, but he kind of doubted it.

“There’s nobody here,” Spectacle said. “Hmm. I need a change of clothes, and so do you.”

The swordsman wasn’t exactly wrong. The collar of Luke’s shirt was still intact, but not much else. His pants looked more like a loincloth now, except a bit more breezy. Luke sighed and nodded glumly. “These were supposed to last, too.”

“They’re growing back,” Zea said. “Half an hour ago, none of this material was here.”

“Huh, how about that. I didn’t think the magic would survive with this little bit left,” Luke said. “How long will it take to grow back all the way?”

“Day or two,” she said. “Eh, maybe three. There’s not a lot left, so it’ll take a bit to really get going.”

“So I need clothes,” Luke said. “Don’t suppose there’s a convenient clothes line anywhere nearby.”

“No,” Spectacle said. “This farm is a front. Nobody lives here. Take a look outside and you can see what condition the house is in.”

Luke pushed open the barn doors to find a dilapidated old house surrounded by overgrown weeds. The front door hung crooked in its frame, and the shutters had been torn from the windows. The roof was, surprisingly, still in one piece, for what it was worth.

The barn was in much better condition, though from the outside, it was easy to mistake it for a matched set with the house. It was in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint and there were more than a few rotting boards. The interior was solid, at least. Whatever group of smugglers was using the place was at least taking good enough care of the barn that it wasn’t likely to fall down anytime soon.

Of course, they weren’t going to have much use for it now that the arena had been destroyed. Luke couldn’t imagine it would be hosting any fights in the near future, and the smugglers would need to bridge the canyon the demon had carved across their tunnel anyway. If they hadn’t gotten away with a considerable chunk of money, Luke would have been annoyed at all the wasted time down there.

“You two are about the same size, right?” Zea asked.

Luke glanced over at Spectacle. They had similar builds, but Spectacle was at least three inches shorter. Maybe it looked different from her angle. “Uh, no, no we’re not,” Luke told her.

“Hey, I’m not looking for a hassle here. If I buy two shirts and two trousers in the same size, will that be good enough?”

“If you bought them in my size, I guess,” Luke said. “They’d be a bit big on him. If you bought them in his size, they wouldn’t fit me.”

Zea gave them both a dirty look and said, “Wait here. You’ll get whatever I give you.”

Then she stomped off toward the city, leaving the two men to stand outside an old barn. They watched her leave in silence, neither moving until she was a mile away.

“Your friend is quite decisive,” Spectacle said.

“Some days,” Luke agreed. “Uh, listen… I don’t want to pry into your personal life or whatever. I mean, you’re wearing a mask for a reason, right? But, your family knew my dad?”

“We did, centuries ago. You must understand that this was generations and generations back, thirty or more. We have stories and legends, not facts. Some of those legends are true, I’m sure, but I don’t know if I can tell you what you want to know.”

“Whatever you can tell me,” Luke said.

“Hmm. Alright. Let me think. William Bennet was an off-worlder who appeared almost a thousand years ago. He was known as William Wyrmsbane at the time of his death in the fourth century. Supposedly, he had perfect mastery of the system itself. It was within his power to change anything and everything about your status, even to the point of taking away skills and giving you new ones. For that reason, he was able to adapt himself to every individual dragon he fought so that he could exploit their weaknesses.”

“Hold up. Are you telling me that my old man used to hunt dragons?”

“Quite successfully, if the stories are to be believed. He’s directly credited with the deaths of at least three of the dragon emperors as well as being the primary reason what eventually became the Huang Province was pacified. Prior to his intervention, the area was supposed to have been infested with thousands of lesser wyrms.”

Luke tried to picture his father fighting a dragon, but he couldn’t make his own mental image line up with that reality. Really, he couldn’t picture his dad fighting anything. When he thought of his father, he pictured a broken man with a swelling beer gut who spent all his time either working or shitfaced, sometimes both at the same time. Bill Bennet hadn’t been one to hold down a job for more than six months.

Even when he thought back to before his mom’s death, he couldn’t remember his dad doing anything noteworthy or exciting. He was just a normal guy whose life had taken a bad turn and who hadn’t been very good at dealing with it. Luke could picture the man beating a marmot to death with a crowbar, grunting and swearing the whole time, but to go up against something with real power… No.

“We still have some of the weapons your father supposedly used kept in places of honor in the archival vault,” Spectacle said. “It would be my great uncle’s decision whether to release them, but if there was ever anyone who deserved to hold them, it would be his descendent.”

“I already have a weapon,” Luke said absently. He was still trying to picture his dad leaping through the air with a sword or axe and smiting the ever-loving shit out of giant lizard.

“Is that so?”

“Left it back at the inn we were staying at. It wasn’t part of my gladiator disguise,” Luke explained.

Spectacle laughed. “That’s fair. I don’t normally walk around covered from head to toe in an assassin’s garb.”

“Probably for the best. I can see, like, all of your business right now.” Luke made a vague gesture at Spectacle’s waist.

“There’s supposed to be a coat that goes over this.”

“You should have worn it,” Luke told him.

“Yes, well, it wasn’t my choice not to leave it behind. But that’s neither here nor there. We’re talking about the legend of William Wyrmsbane.”

“I honestly don’t even know what else to ask,” Luke said. “Just… all the questions I can think of, you won’t be able to answer. He’s been dead for centuries. I’m sure you don’t know what he was like.”

“We have some accounts left behind back at our family’s home,” Spectacle said. “Maybe the information you’re looking for are there.”

“Maybe. It’s hard to picture my dad being some big hero. He couldn’t even get his own life together the last time I saw him. Every night was a race to the bottom of the bottle. Then he’d get up, still buzzed, and go to work in the morning. He always said he had to work hard at the beginning of the day because the hangover would kick in half way through. Doesn’t sound much like a legendary dragon fighting hero, does it?”

“William was not without his demons,” Spectacle said. “Perhaps that is what led to his death. It was always assumed that he finally succumbed to XP Madness somewhere alone out in the wilderness. With his level as high as it was, it was practically inevitable, no matter how great his mastery of the system. Some fates cannot be avoided.”

“Eh, I already fixed that,” Luke said. “Just need another 82 AP.”

“I’m sorry, I must have misheard you,” Spectacle said slowly. “I’m sure you didn’t just say you know of a skill that lets you overcome XP Madness.”

“Well it didn’t exist until a few months ago. I made it with the system’s help.”

“A bloodline skill then, Does…” Spectacle hesitated, then steeled himself. “Does it only work on you?”

“Supposed to work on anyone, but it only delays the onset. I have to keep using it over and over.”

Spectacle let out a shaky breath. “You would be able to purchase this skill with a few more levels?”

“Yup,” Luke said.

“Would you be willing to use it on someone for me? My older brother, you see, he’s… He’s on the edge. He’s in seclusion now, but soon he will be called on to perform his role as the sacrifice in the Rite of the New Generation.”

Luke thought back to that thing he’d seen when he’s first reached the eastern continent, that line of men at high levels lined up to be murdered, one by one, by a guy who was half their level. That had the air of something military, but Luke could imagine a similar, more private ceremony for long-established families.

For that matter, Spectacle wasn’t that far away from being on the shanking end of one of those events. He was already level 48, and a good round of [XP Cycle] could easily add a few years to his life. To his credit, the man hadn’t asked for himself. It wouldn’t cost Luke anything extra to hit everyone he could see with the skill, though. He just needed to gain a few levels and actually pick it up first.

Perhaps mistaking Luke’s silence for hesitation, Spectacle pressed on. “I’m sure we could compensate you somehow, even beyond access to the artifacts your father left behind.”

Luke shook his head. “It’s not that. I was just thinking of something I saw when I first got here, a public event where a bunch of high level people were killed one at a time by someone who was in his mid-20s, level-wise. This system is such shit that this kind of stuff happens.”

Who’d ever heard of a game that punished people for leveling too high? The Pantheon was a bunch of shitheads for building a system like that. He got that it was the little chunks of divine essence that were responsible, but they could have built XP cycling into the base system when they designed the God Machine. But no, the skill hadn’t even existed until he’d asked System to create it for him.

“I’ll help if I can, but I need to put on a few more levels first, and demons aren’t exactly good XP. I don’t know how long I can afford to just stick around this area, either. The worse this demon invasion thing gets, the harder it’s going to be to keep traveling. If we don’t get moving again soon, it might delay us by months or even years.”

“That should not be a problem,” Spectacle said. “I’m sure our patriarch will allow you use of the family’s leveling grounds once he learns that you’re of the SysAdmin bloodline.”

“Oh, well, in that case, I guess it’ll be pretty easy then? How long could it take to get fifty thousand or so XP?”

“Well… it’ll be faster than if you just go roaming the wilderness looking for random monsters. I can’t say for sure how many weeks that will take.”

Luke blew out a sigh. “Nothing’s ever easy, is it? Well, it’s worth exploring, you know, once I have pants again. Zea’s probably still going to be an hour or two before she gets back. So, what else can you tell me about my dad?”