Chapter 73 - Reunions

Max made his way into a small room behind a stone door. With a grunt he pushed aside the door and there on a pile of rock slabs for a table, his friend waited.

“Took you long enough!” The weapon chimed. “You look like a swarm of cats pissed on you.”

Max chuckled softly. “Nice to see you too, Mav.”

“I must say, I do miss being carried,” Maverick said. “You get to shoot more stuff, if you use a humanoid slave to move you around.”

“Since when am I a slave?”

“Since you abandoned me,” Maverick sniffed.

“You seemed to be doing fine,” Max said. “You even killed a lizard.”

“Hahahaa! You… You should have… Hahahhahaa… You should have seen it,” Maverick wheezed. “That idiot lightning mage was trying to get me to work which of course resulted in nothing. He smelled even worse than you, and I wasn’t about to co-operate.”

“Yeah?”

“And he… Hahahahah!” Maverick had to stop to catch his breath. How that worked for a creature without lungs, Max didn’t know. “He actually peered inside my barrel.”

Max grinned as he shook his head.

“I thought humans were stupid,” Maverick said. “But I found the bar could certainly be lower.”

“I’m glad you’ve enjoyed yourself,” Max said.

“How did you get here?” Maverick asked. “We didn’t get any experience. What happened to the lizards?”

“Some ran off, some met a less than savory death.”

“Ooooooh, show me.”

Max picked up his companion and fitted him inside the holster. He felt full again. The empty holster had almost been bothering him. As cumbersome and unwieldy as the ridiculously proportioned revolver was, the weapon was a part of him. And not just in the sense that they shared a Cultivation bond. Well maybe it was that. But Maverick had been with him since the start. He could sense his thoughts and emotions. In that moment Max realized that Maverick was more than a tool, more than a pet, more than a friend. In a way, Maverick was his soulmate.

“Ugh,” Maverick said. “You’re so icky. Even your fingers are dirty. Say what you will about the lizards, but at least they washed their hands.”

Gods above help my soul…

They got out of the room and Max showed the gun his work as he explained what had happened. Maverick was quite excited at the whole prospect of using the bugs as a weapon.

“Sometimes you surprise me, Max.”

“Why, because I have good ideas?”

“Well, yes.”

“And?”

Through their soulbond Max could feel as if Maverick had just given him a quizzical look. “And? There is no and.”

“Wow, I’m so glad we had this conversation.”

“Anyway,” Maverick said. “These bugs are creepy and awesome. Do you think we could use them?”

“Use them?” Max wondered. “Like for what?”

Maverick sighed. “Like you just did when you didn’t have me to solve all your problems for you. To attack enemies.”

Max thought about it. “Yeah, that sounds good on paper, but we can’t maintain a safe distance from them and move in such a way that they won’t cause problems. We spend a lot of time huddling and hiding. I won’t always have a wall to [Tether] to either.”

Maverick hummed as Max watched the bugs clean up a lizard’s corpse. It was almost eaten to the bone already. If you ignored the shape of the skull, it was really hard to tell it apart from a human skeleton…

“Do you think you could control those bugs with a class?” Maverick said.

“I already have a class.”

“Not you you, you endless dunderhead,” Maverick huffed. “Just ‘you’ in general.”

“You’d make an excellent teacher,” Max mused. “Patient and gentle.”

“Bah,” Maverick said. “So what do you think?”

“You want to do what exactly?” Max asked.

“I don’t know,” Maverick said. “That’s for you to figure out.”

“You’re suggesting that if someone came down here with an unupgraded [Combatant] class, they could interact with the bugs and maybe get a class?”

“Yeah, why not?” Maverick said. “You’ve been saying you can affect what you get by wanting and needing it.”

“It’s an idea,” Max said. “I’ll be mildly shocked if anyone wants to come down here to play with toxic flesh-eating bugs, but I’m getting used to crazy. I’ll run it by the people at the outpost.”

“Don’t forget to mention it was my idea,” Maverick said, extremely pleased with himself.

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Speaking of the outpost, what are we going to do now?” Maverick asked.

“Yeah…” Max said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to think about.”

“Well, think aloud,” Maverick demanded. “I can only sense your thoughts when you’re actively verbalizing something. I can’t get anything but  subtle impressions from the gray soup that generally is your mind.”

“Yeah, you really don’t do subtle, do you?” Max said and chuckled to himself. Maverick wasn’t amused. Max could feel a surge of impatience from their bond. “We could return to the dwarves now and ask Durum to teach us more about Cultivation as was originally planned.”

“But you don’t want to do that?”

“I want to know where these lizards are camped,” Max said half aloud. “It would give us more information, which is a power unto itself. Cultivation will make us tougher, but knowing how organized the enemy is, how big a force, and where they’re located and what resources are available to them is almost if not more useful.”

“I don’t see how knowing all that is more useful than getting a high Cultivation level and just crushing those scaly fools.”

Max scoffed at that in good nature. He peered around the intersection at which they were standing and chose a corridor.

“Back to the dwarves?” Maverick asked. “So you do agree with me?”

Max developed his gait into a jog. “We need to go tell them we dealt with the threat and we’ve held our end of the bargain.”

Max had come to the decision slowly, and he knew it. If the enemy had escaped straight back up to the Dreadlands, they would have a decent lead on Max. Tracking them would be hard, especially with Max’s skills. But he was so tired and hungry that it was hard to think. That did put a hint of a smile on his face. No, the enemy wouldn’t be far. They hadn’t slept properly for two days. They’d be on their last legs with their underdeveloped Cultivation.

Max had a short exchange with the dwarven expedition. They weren’t exactly thrilled with Max having abandoned them, but fortunately he had a good rapport with them by now. Also actually delivering on the promise of dealing with the threat didn’t hurt.

The expedition leader promised to return to Durum immediately and to tell him that Max had upheld his bargain. He also made a quick account of what he had seen and experienced in the third floor of the dungeon. Hesitantly, Max told them about his suspicions of the third floor having a big boss somewhere, but the prospect of monster-bugs was already enough to clearly deter any bravery from the dwarves for now. Max made a note of passing the word to Durum, that they shouldn’t try to take on the third floor without his help. He doubted it would help at all. Durum might have his good qualities, but the High-King’s greed was unrivaled. Whether another two score dwarves had to die for Durum to learn that wasn’t up to Max.

“Alright!” Maverick exclaimed as they left the dwarves behind. “The dynamic duo is back together. The Masterkey and the Monkey-servant adventure again!”

“You really have a way with words, Mav.”

“Thanks.”

“Not a good way.”

“Hmph,” Maverick huffed. “At least I have ideas. You just shoot them down.

“Here’s an idea,” Max said. “Let’s go hunt some scaly fools.”

“Hell yeah!”