Unexpected Healer Book 2 -- Chapter 22

Chapter 22

Leaving Forgestone earlier, the Guards said absolutely nothing to Thaden as he walked out of the gates after an hour of painstakingly climbing over the scattered rubble that used to comprise the buildings in the grand city.  Instead, they’d simply stared at him from atop the walls as he passed through the gate below, their silent judgement almost too much for him to bear.  The guilt that he’d been feeling since he survived being eaten by the Magma Worm reared its ugly head, making his steps falter a few times, but he spammed his Major Cure Mental Affliction spell a few dozen times in a row, feeling marginally better in the process. 

The guilt didn’t go away, of course, but it was manageable with the additional magical help.  The Lifewarden thought that it might not ever go away as the heaviness of it settled into his soul; he could only hope that it faded enough over time that it didn’t debilitate him with a simple thought in that direction.

As much as he would’ve done things differently had he known what would happen, it was done and there wasn’t any way to turn back time and fix his mistake.  Or is there?  I don’t suppose magical theory is advanced enough to initiate time travel, is it?  He highly doubted it; it could do miraculous things, like resurrect a dead person, but turning back time was probably out of the realm of possibility – otherwise it probably would’ve been used to find a way to get rid of the Adversary.  Unless he discovered otherwise, Thaden had to treat the whole situation as one in which he had no way of reversing, and learn to live with what he’d done.

Because he was likely the only one that could stop things from getting worse.

Emerging through the stone gateway, Thaden looked around to see discarded items scattered all around from people who had fled the city, but not a single person.  He’d already made plans for when he got out of Forgestone, as climbing over all the rubble gave him some time alone to think.  In essence, there were two things he needed to know and two things he needed to do.

The first thing that he needed to know, because the thought of it wouldn’t leave him alone until he knew, was exactly how bad the loss of life from both the local Charee and the Contenders had been in the city.  Yes, it likely wasn’t good for his piece of mind to know exactly how many died because of his mistake, but not knowing was like an itch that he couldn’t scratch that would only get worse as time went on.  If he didn’t discover at least an estimated number of the dead, then he would go on thinking the worst; for instance, he’d rather learn that 5,000 Contenders died rather than thinking that all 43,000-plus listed on the Quest had.  While he wasn’t sure he would ever find out how many locals died, he knew it would go a long way to heal his psyche if he saw for himself how many had actually made it out of the city before it was too late.

Secondly, he needed to know where to go for his next target.  Based on the recommended Level of 70 for the first of the new Quests he’d been assigned, it certainly wasn’t the Forest’s Wrath Dungeon that he had been planning on going to next.  That one had a Level range of 45 to 55 for the Medial difficulty according to the information he had been given by Veronia at the Forgestone Adventurer Coalition.  He didn’t even bother thinking about the second dungeon related to these Quests yet, which had a minimum recommended Level of 100, as he was thoroughly unprepared to tackle that one yet. 

Even if he discovered which two dungeons these Quests were referencing, he needed to advance his own Level to the point where he might be able to handle them. 

Which brought him to the first of the things he needed to do.  Should I Level-up now, or wait?  This was the decision he had to make, and it was harder than he expected it would be.  There were arguments either way, but in the end, what it came down to was time.

There were still over 160 days to complete the first of the Quests, and in that time he could visit a number of strong dungeons with higher-Level monsters and try to complete them.  If he managed to finish them, he would end up gaining a lot of extra PICK because all the monsters would be stronger than him.  He was more than aware that the bonus for killing higher-Level monsters was significant, and with the recent tripling of his PICK accumulated by all sources, it could be astronomical. 

But if he did Level-up now, he would gain additional stat points and new spells, which might make a difference in how he approached the dungeons in the Quests – as well as whatever catastrophic event would come afterwards.  The drawback for doing this would obviously be less PICK from monsters he killed that were closer to his Level, and he would be forced to tackle extremely strong dungeons when he wasn’t even sure he could beat them at this point.  The Magma Colossus was a bit of a wake-up call with how he wasn’t able to kill it using his normal methods; he couldn’t rely on luck to provide him with the perfect item to use every time he happened to enter a new dungeon, such as that Failed Necklace that allowed him to freeze the Boss in the Magma Dungeon.

While he managed to win, if he hadn’t managed to find that Necklace, it would’ve been dungeons 1, Thaden 0 – if he was considering everything after the Mausoleum, of course.  That was a special case, and while he was contemplating visiting another dungeon that had undead types of monsters in it, he again knew from the information he had about the dungeons in the Region that it wasn’t one of the Anchoring dungeons.

With that decision looming on the horizon, there was something else he needed to do, which was visit the nearest Coalition branch that could upgrade his Badge Rank to Gold; if he was going to be heading to harder dungeons, then he would need a harder set of Quests to go with them.  He could always delve through them without a Quest, of course, but he wasn’t prepared to give up the rewards that came with completing them – especially the PICK rewards.

Unfortunately, the one place he knew of that could upgrade them past Bronze was now lying in ruins, as he was told that none of the town branches had that capability.  In other words, he would have to visit one of the other two cities in the Region in order to do that, and they were weeks of travel away.  That fact was weighing heavily in favor of his decision on whether to wait to Level-up; if he did it too early, he might end up missing out on great rewards because he couldn’t access them without the proper Rank.

And as much as he didn’t care about the gold and even Rank Progress he might miss out on, the same couldn’t be said for PICK – because PICK was the only thing that was going to allow him to be able to take down those two dungeons and the subsequent aftermath.  At least, that’s what he felt was the correct solution; he had no other methods he could think of at this point that could work – or none that might work in the time limit he had.  There was always the possibility that he could find a party of low-Level Contenders that would be willing to work with him, and by power-Leveling them as best he could, raise them up to the point where they might help defeat the extremely powerful monsters the dungeons were likely to have in a display of amazing teamwork and magical prowess.

Yeah, like that would work. 

He didn’t have the time to do all of that, and trying to keep other Contenders alive in a situation like he’d experienced in the Magma Dungeon would be near impossible.  It hadn’t been very difficult in the Mausoleum with Sarah and her party, but that was also because he had the advantage that his healing spells damaged the Undead and subsequently took them down relatively quickly.  That being said, they almost did die in the final Boss room, and it was only through luck that he had been able to defeat Nehetmo. 

Besides, sharing PICK and loot with other people didn’t exactly sit right with him at this moment in time, as he was fairly confident that he could solo whatever he came across – unless there was another incident with a Boss that healed itself, of course.  That was the only reason he thought it might be beneficial to have another person in his party that could do damage, or else discover a way to do that on his own like the Failed Necklace had done for him. 

Thaden walked for hours, his mind still edging toward one decision or the other regarding his accumulated PICK, but before long he began to pass people on the road.  There were a few parties of Contenders, all of whom looked weary and shellshocked, but the majority of them were large groups of low-Level Charee with small wagons or carts that they were using to carry their belongings, pulled by themselves or occasionally a beast of burden.  It wasn’t until a bit later that he saw single or small groups of Charee walking along with just a backpack or nothing at all as they spread out toward the south, southeast, and southwest – though the majority of them went directly south.

Which was what decided his own direction.  If he wanted a fairly good approximation of how many people made it out of the city, he had to go to where most of them seemed to be heading.

By the time he arrived at a town, Northbend if his memory of the local maps served him well, he’d passed thousands of Charee refugees and hundreds of Contenders, with none of them sparing him more than a glance that was quickly sent somewhere else.  At first, he thought that this was a bad sign, as if they had somehow recognized him, but it only took a few minutes of watching everyone to see that this wasn’t the case.  The Charee didn’t look at any of the Contenders for more than a second or two, and it didn’t take a genius to realize it was because they likely blamed the Contenders (and not just Thaden) for their current plight.  Even given that they had been displaced from their homes, very few of them appeared genuinely upset or heartbroken, as if they had expected this to happen at some point and it had simply been earlier than they thought it would be. 

It was strange, but then again, everything he’d experienced thus far in Tarth had been at least a little bit strange.

As for the Contenders, they didn’t look at other Contender parties or solo individuals because it was clear that some had lost members in the attack.  Staring at or even talking to someone on the road was a bit much for what was likely to be a raw wound, and most of them avoided doing so like plague.

The town of Northbend was as opposite of the nearly silent trek across the land as could be.  He heard the town before he saw it, which he thought was strange because there was usually a sound-dampening bubble or something around every other town he’d seen that didn’t allow noise to escape, but the reason for that became obvious as soon as he was able to set his sights on Northbend.

The walled town had overflowed with people, both Charee and Earthen Contenders, and he thought that there were at least 10,000 locals camped outside the walls.  More were arriving every minute, but in the distance he could see an almost equal number leaving, likely filtering out to other towns so as not to overwhelm Northbend too much.  It was a prime example of a refugee camp if he ever did see one.

Directly outside the gates, and therefore exempt from the noise-dampening effect of the town, were hundreds of Contenders comingling with each other, shouting to be heard over their neighbors as they practically accosted anyone trying to enter the town. 

“—you seen Geraldo?  He should’ve been here by now—”

“—and I’m telling you, I saw Flora eaten by one of those damn Worms right before my very eyes—”

“—can’t afford to stay here, so if you’d be kind enough to buy some of my—”

“—left it my room back in Forgestone, and now it’s lost—"

“—can’t go back, so what do they expect us to do?”

He heard all of this and more as he got closer, coming from panicked and confused Contenders who were looking for lost party members, questioning what they should be doing, or lamenting the loss of something tangible back in Forgestone.  He stopped at the edge of the crowd to listen in, gaining a little information about what had happened in the city after the attack started, but most of what he learned wasn’t necessarily useful for what he needed to know.  He slowly pushed through the crowd, only to be stopped multiple times by a hand on the sleeve of his dirty, blood-stained, and slightly scorched robe.

“Have you seen a short guy with a goatee named Hector?”

“Did you pass anyone named Mariposa along the road?”

“Garret was wearing a light red robe; did you happen to see him?”

He felt horrible for what they were going through looking for their party members, similar to loved ones searching for family members after a natural disaster, but he could only shake his head and say no.  He supposed he should’ve been paying more attention to those he passed by on the road to Northbend, but he had been wrapped up in his head for most of the trip, which went by easily with his new Traveler’s Boots.  He had already decided to maintain his current name of Angelo and his apparent Level of 20 instead of switching back to Christopher again, just in case anyone else had been following him like Camille had.  Angelo was fairly “clean”, he supposed, though he would likely change back to Christopher in the future once he distanced himself a bit from the local Contender population.

He had also declined to change out of his attire because he thought it gave him a bit of authenticity; he hoped it looked like he had barely escaped the city with his life.  It was technically true, he supposed, but not exactly in the way he wished it to appear.

Inside the town of Northbend was just as stuffed to the walls as the refugee camp outside indicated, and there were a lot more Contenders than he expected there to be – which was a very good sign.  He walked around for a while, attempting to listen in on any conversations to gain more information, but most of those outside were simply trying to purchase or sell items or looking for a place to stay, which seemed to be at a premium with so many people inside the town.  It was already edging toward evening by this point, the day having flown by, and it was something that concerned Thaden as well, but he was more than capable of sleeping outside if it came down to it. 

He visited the Adventurer Coalition, which was easy enough to find despite never visiting this town before, as it was the largest building inside the walls, but he almost immediately turned around and left as soon as he walked in.  He wasn’t sure how they managed to stuff so many people inside, but he could barely move or hear himself think with so many people talking or demanding things all at once.  The only thing he got from the crowd inside was that while there were more people speaking about missing party members, more of them were focused on what came next; they were already moving past the disaster that occurred in Forgestone and planning out what their next steps.

He also heard his name bandied about a few times – or at least his #32599999-E name.  After hearing him being blamed for everything approximately a half-dozen times in the few seconds he was inside the building, he decided to leave rather than hear any more from them.

But with so many Contenders inside the Coalition building, running around town, or congregating outside the gates, he was encouraged.  Many more Earthen representatives had survived the attack than he had originally surmised, at least from what he could tell; he didn’t have any hard numbers, of course, but judging by what he saw here and estimating who might have traveled to other nearby towns, he guessed that perhaps three-quarters or more of the Contenders that had been inside Forgestone at the start of the attack had managed to escape. 

It lightened the load just a little bit more on his mind.

He spent another hour or so wandering around town before the sun went down, and he eventually decided to try one more place to get the information he needed.  The Pickled Wagon was a tavern with no inn attached to it, but it turned out to be exactly what he needed.  He had to wait a little bit to get a seat at the end of the bar, where he ordered some food and had to wait nearly an hour for it to come out; while he was waiting, he listened to the conversations around him with much more success than any of his previous attempts around the town.

Thaden learned that an estimated 2,000 or so Contenders had died in the city before they could escape, with most of them being inside the dungeon tunnel.  He also discovered that anyone that had been in the lower-Level dungeons in Forgestone had essentially been kicked out prior to the attack, which was why at least half of the casualties had been where the Magma Worms had originally emerged from below.  It was something that he had to keep in mind for when he completed the next Anchor dungeon, as he would have to somehow get the word out for everyone nearby to put off going into any dungeons before an imminent attack. 

For the Charee, the general consensus that less than 1% of the population had died in the attack.  As he had suspected from his travel to Northbend, the locals had apparently been ready for such an occurrence and were quick to respond, escaping with as many of their belongings before they could fall victim to the Worms.  That fact eased his heart somewhat, even if 1% of the city’s population was still likely over 1,000 people.

He also discovered that any of the service posts on the Contender Market based in Forgestone were taken down automatically upon the city’s destruction, meaning that he didn’t have to worry about anyone looking to hire him anytime soon.  He hadn’t even known that this was a thing, as he thought that the posting was a one-time deal, but apparently it stayed up until he removed it. 

Lastly, there was speculation as to what the next Anchoring dungeon could be, even if none of the Contenders talking thought that they would ever be a high enough Level to even attempt it.  The rewards were enough of a draw to call attention to it, however, so there was at least some conversation around it – which was exactly what he needed to hear. 

According to what he remembered of the information regarding dungeons in Region 1, there were a total of 21 dungeons that fell in the range between Level 60 and Level 80.  No one, not even Thaden who had completed the first Anchoring dungeon, knew exactly what the Quest meant by the minimum recommended Level being 70; did that mean that the dungeon had a minimum recommended Level between Levels 70 and 80, or did it reflect the first chance that a party might be able to actually complete it?  If the latter was the case, then would the dungeon have recommended Levels between Levels 60 and 70, as it was most likely that a party around Level 70 could actually kill the Boss?  Thinking about the Magma Dungeon, he was fairly confident that a “normal” party would’ve had to be at the higher end of the Level 40 to 50 minimum recommended Level range to actually defeat the Magma Colossus – but he could be wrong.

Unfortunately, the answer to which dungeon could be the Anchoring one wasn’t easy.  He had been hoping that it might be near another of the cities, with the thought that they were all near cities like the Magma Dungeon had been, but that wasn’t the case.  The closest of the options to a city was a dozen miles away, which wasn’t exactly a good sign that it was the one that he’d have to seek out.

Soon after his food came, he picked at it as his mind was consumed by thoughts of where he needed to go next.  He debated about going to the Adventurer Coalition and asking if they knew, which he might still do, but he had a feeling that if they had kept the first Anchoring dungeon a secret, they were likely to do the same for the subsequent ones.  It was the Contender’s job to figure it out, after all, so they likely couldn’t interfere.

Perhaps I can figure it out by observing some of the towns I travel through and see which ones are prepared to flee at the first sign of an incoming disaster?  But how would I even know?  What if every town has an escape plan just in case something goes wrong?

He wasn’t sure of the answer to that, but it was still an avenue to explore.  The only other option he could think of was to visit every dungeon on the list and see if he could figure it out that way, but they were so scattered around that he might not be able to visit them all in time.  Narrowing it down would be better, of course, but he wasn’t sure how to do that quite yet.  Perhaps when he figured out if he was going to spend all his PICK soon or not, the answer might come to him.

Someone sat down next to him after his previous neighbor had gotten up without a word to Thaden the entire time he was there, and the Lifewarden could practically feel the sheer hunger pouring off the young man as he eyed his meal. 

Hmm…  This might be an opportunity to gain some additional information. 

“Here, it looks like you need it,” he said abruptly, ripping off some of his bread and handing it to the tall, blond-haired man wearing the muted colors and tighter clothes he associated with the Scout Class.  The arm brace thingy along his left arm told him that Kyler was likely an archer of some kind, though he didn’t see any indication of a bow or quiver – because they were likely in the man’s Inventory. 

As he started a conversation with Kyler, the other man seemed to loosen up a bit after he got some food in him, revealing that he had lost his entire party in Forgestone, but he didn’t seem too cut up about it.  Exchanging stories of their escape, with Thaden having to make something up on the spot that sounded both heroic and ridiculous at the same time, he began questioning the man about what he was going to do next.

“Find a party, I suppose,” he said dejectedly.  The Lifewarden could tell that he wasn’t dejected because his party had died, but because he thought it was going to be a pain finding another one as a Scout Class after explaining that more Scouts escaped from Forgestone from fractured parties than anyone else.  “And then take advantage of this extra PICK accumulation from that Achievement.  At least there’s one good thing that came out of all this.”

“But is it, uh, suitable compensation for what you’ve gone through?” Thaden asked, genuinely curious at the way Kyler – and from what he’d overheard from other Contenders – seemed to be excited over the Achievement.

The archer shook his head.  “Not quite, but it’s probably going to do more in the long run than anything else I can imagine.  Do you know how fast we’re going to Level now?  It wouldn’t surprise me if there are some of us pushing Level 45 by the time the bonus PICK wears off.”

Wow, it really does take a lot longer to Level than I thought.

“I suppose you have a point.  Still, though, what would you do if you ever saw the one responsible for all… this?” Thaden asked, waving around the full tavern to emphasize his question. 

As he finished up the last of his meal that finally arrived after about a half hour, the man hesitated before responding.  “Eh, probably shake their hand,” he said with a shrug.  “Don’t get me wrong, at first I was pissed off that someone had done all this, but it’s also a chance for us to get ahead faster than any other Region.  Which, as you can imagine, will lead to higher Rankings for all of us here.”

“Even with the greater danger?”

“Yes, even with the greater danger.  A bonus to PICK accumulation is a boon that you can’t pay for and it was never mentioned in Training, so it has to be pretty rare.  Sure, it sucks right now and will probably suck for the next week as everyone recovers from the change, but I think we’ll also see the Contenders of this Region grabbing the bull by the horns and advancing much faster than ever before.  I was already seen some parties slacking off in their development as they chose to only delve through the easier, safer difficulties once they reached a certain Level; now, though, they’ll have to push themselves in order not to be left behind, because soon enough all of the dungeons will require them to be a much higher Level just so that they don’t die.  All of the complaining and griping you’re hearing right now is going to go away once everyone figures this out.”

Thaden hadn’t really thought of that; he was only considering the consequences of his action as only a punishment, not a boon.  Well, the deaths and relocation of the local population were certainly punishments, but for the survivors?  Yes, it could certainly be considered a benefit if they took advantage of it.  He didn’t believe that anyone would be coming out and publicly thanking him and throwing celebrations in his honor, but perhaps it wasn’t all as bad as he thought it was.   

 And with that one conversation, the guilt that had been stabbing into his mind since the attack occurred loosened its grip on his mental state almost entirely.  It wasn’t gone, but he didn’t feel the need to spam his Major Cure Mental Affliction over and over to function properly anymore.

It also cleared up his thoughts enough to finally make a decision about his PICK, and he smiled to himself as he wished the young Kyler a good night once their conversation wound down.