Chapter 51 (Patreon)

He was shivering, and it wasn’t because of the cold.

Rob tried and failed to keep his breathing steady as he raged against his bonds. Whatever material the chair and its bindings were made out of, it was durable enough to resist his struggles even after activating Bulk Up and straining hard enough to pop a vein in his forehead. If this was a prison, it had likely been constructed to withstand breakout attempts from people with much a higher Strength than he had. He could try summoning the Broken Shortsword into his hand and repeat his method of escaping from when the Seneschal infiltrators kidnapped him, but even if its sharp-edged Dwarven steel trumped whatever the chair was made out of – which now that he thought about, was likely also Dwarven-made – he had nowhere near enough leverage to be able to saw through inches of metal with a fancy knife.

Those considerations and experimentations took thirty seconds. Thirty seconds where Keira – god knows how far away – was lying stunned and injured around Mines and monsters.. Thirty seconds where his captor had time to notice that their trap had sprung and left someone at their mercy. Thirty seconds where the sun dipped a little lower over the horizon, bringing him closer to being shackled in an all-encompassing darkness.

All so similar to what he’d been subjected to when he was dragged to Elatra through a portal out of nowhere. His friend abandoned, his autonomy stolen, and his senses drowned by the darkness choking him, the fucking darkness-

An impression of stern urgency smacked him upside the back of the head. Rob, Diplomacy said. We need to focus. You’re losing your composure.

“Gee, I wonder why!” Rob yelled. Bulk Up’s buff expired, rendering his struggles even less effective than before. Rob deactivated Tough Skin and Vitamin D(efense) and re-summoned the Broken Shortsword. If he could just lose some baggage, like a few fingers, or part of a wrist, he could wriggle what remained of his hand through the restraints and use that to free himself and it would be fine with Lifesurge and Regeneration and Regrow Limb and he could go help Keira and not be in the darkness and-

Rob, Diplomacy intoned, before shifting into a more reassuring inflection. All I need is one minute to explain why you should take a deep breath, relax, and proceed at your own pace to find a way to extricate yourself from this predicament in a way that doesn’t resort to self-mutilation. I know being stuck here is touching on multiple sore spots in concurrence, but please, just give me one minute of paying attention to my voice, and my voice only. Could you do that for me?

He almost couldn’t. It was with great effort that Rob rounded up all the stressors making a mess of his thoughts, put them in a box, and shoved that box behind a curtain. Rob had no idea what that abstract battle looked like to someone literally living in his mind, but by the end of it he could feel a hint of pride emanating from Diplomacy.

Thank you, the Skill said. Let’s go down the line, and I’ll explain why each of your worries isn’t as dire as you think it is. Keira may be injured, but she isn’t alone. Alessia can fly HP Potions over to her, and the others will be coming up with ways to extract her if that doesn’t pan out. We’re allied with numerous competent people with a wide variety of abilities and expertise. Now is the time to put our faith in them.

What if more monsters attack? Rob asked, hoping that he would lose the argument.

You and her were out there hunting Mines for hours and were only attacked once. I doubt there are any more in the vicinity; the worm that appeared must have been a lone wolf, so to speak. The Deserters will have plenty of time to come up with a plan before another one shows up. Okay?

Rob hesitated before nodding slowly.

Good, Diplomacy said. Now, as far as being captured goes, well...I don’t know if we actually were. Look at the state of this place; I doubt there’s anyone left in whatever facility we’ve been transported to. It’s an old, abandoned relic of The Scouring, and we were simply unfortunate enough to be caught in a trap set by a military force that no longer exists.

Rob clenched his teeth together. Why did I trigger the Mine? It was only supposed to work on non-Humans. Is it because this isn’t my original body? Cause that wouldn’t do a lot of good for the whole extended, prolonged existential crisis I’ve been having.

Diplomacy shrugged. It says ‘Human’ on your Character Sheet. Isn’t it far more likely that the Mine was faulty, or even that Elder Alessia was wrong about them being attuned to specific races? Both are much simpler, obvious answers that don’t lead you down a mental rabbit hole.

Rob unclenched his teeth. And the darkness?

You have torches in your Inventory. Once we escape, we’ll light them.

Rob couldn’t help but laugh. “You make it all sound so uncomplicated,” he said. “One last thing: how the hell am I supposed to get out of this chair?”

I haven’t the foggiest idea, Diplomacy admitted. Get creative. If nothing else, you’re good at that.

Diplomacy Level Increased! 10 → 11

Rob narrowed his eyes at the message. “What does it say about me that you Leveled up not after the reasoned, well-thought-out arguments about why I should chill, but after you gave me a backhanded compliment?”

To be fair, the logic was the natural lead-in to the sass, Diplomacy elaborated. I would explain further, but the methodology loses some effect when the recipient is more aware of how their personality operates. The important thing is that you’re feeling better, correct?

Rob nodded. Yeah, I am. Thanks. I needed that.

Diplomacy was right. Keira had others to help her, no murderous captors were rushing to his cell, and the darkness surrounding him wasn’t the oppressive void contained within the portal; it was just everyday nightfall. He was constrained and confined, but so fucking what? He’d survived monsters and Infected and eldritch beings from beyond the ken of reality. Rob the Blightkiller refused to be defeated by a goddamn chair. Elatra wasn’t going to get rid of him that easily.

After taking a bit of time to consider his options, Rob brought up his Character Sheet and took a close look at the Skill he would likely have to abuse to pull off his daring escape.

Crystal Bearer Tier 1 Ability: Spatial Storage
Prerequisite: Crystal Bearer Level 1
Description: Can put inanimate items in touch range into a dimensional storage. Items in storage can be produced at will. Limit of 50 pounds or 125 cubic feet of storage per person. Maximum of 50 people using storage allowed. Maximum of 100 total items in storage allowed.

The first thing he did was try to shove the chair he was chained to into his Inventory. While the attempt failed, as was expected, the way it failed taught him several things. The instinctual feedback he received from Spatial Storage when he tried to use it informed him that the thick metal chair exceeded the 50 pound weight limit, and thus, could not be inserted into his Inventory even if he were to dump out every other item he had Stored in order to make room.

Most importantly, the feedback didn’t inform him that he was trying to Store an item that was considered a part of a larger whole. While Elatra considered the front door of a house to be part of the house, it did not consider the prison chair to be a part of the prison as a whole, even though from what Rob could tell the chair was welded to the floor. Rob couldn’t tell whether the distinction Elatra had made was mechanical or philosophical, but either way the chair being fair game was something he could work with. It would have been swell if Plan A worked right off the bat, but he hadn’t been counting on it, so Rob was happy with the intel he got out of the attempt.

Plan B formed quickly. Spatial Storage had informed him that the chair was too heavy to Inventory, but not by a significant degree. If he could make the chair weigh less, then Storing it would be possible. He might not be strong enough to smash it to pieces, but if he could Identify a single weak point of stress fracture and focus on that, then breaking off even a small piece might be enough to lower its weight into Inventory territory.

Do not blow yourself up with a crate of Firebombs, Diplomacy stated. And please forego the insincere denials; I can see the thought forming in the back of your head. Wasn’t getting chewed out by everyone bad enough the one time? I still can’t believe they let you keep another crate in your Inventory after that debacle.

There’s no one around to ruin Not A Scratch’s effect this time around, Rob countered. And a localized explosion would be an easy shortcut to revealing – or outright creating – any weaknesses in this throne of torment’s construction.

Diplomacy paused. You may need the Skill and the Firebombs later. Best to keep your resources in hand until you’ve exhausted all other options.

Rob couldn’t argue with that. The Revival of the Riardin Special was tabled as Rob set about Identifying every square inch of the prison chair that he could see. After a bout of concentration that made his eyes sore, he soon came to hate Dwarven smithing, because the bearded bastards were masters at their craft. As far as he could tell, the chair – despite having sat in a dingy cell for years – didn’t have a single blemish or fleck of rust marring any part of its surface. He might have chalked that up to his eyes being inexperienced at picking out imperfections in metalworking, but Identify backed up his observations, informing him that the chair was in a condition so pristine that it might as well have been created yesterday. Rob wasn’t sure what it would take to damage the Dwarven-forged metal, but at the very least, Father Time had proven ineffective. He was sitting on a perfect piece of flawless fantasy artistry.

But just because it wasn’t perfect, didn’t mean it was whole.

A breakthrough came in the form of a nail. Without Identify, Rob might never have found it; the nail was pressed deep enough into the chair that the top didn’t jut out even a millimeter from where it had been inserted, and if not for the system’s help he might have confused the thin circle on the surface of the metal for a decorative marking. It was as strong as the rest of the Dwarven metal making up the chair and held two segments so tightly together that Rob knew he could struggle for days and not make any headway.

And that was okay. Because it was a nail. A foreign object specifically designed to be inserted into other objects for the express purpose of holding them together. It was a part, not a whole. If you duct-taped two swords together and called it a Dual-Blade, would you say that the tape was now an irrevocable part of your dubious invention? Of course not. Tape could be torn off, and a nail could be removed. They were connectors, not merged parts of the whole.

Diplomacy stayed silent as Rob worked himself up towards his next Storage attempt. He ruthlessly crushed the murmurs in the back of his mind questioning if he really believed his own interpretation of whether or not the nail – which was borderline fused with the chair in question – could so easily be considered a ‘part’ instead of a ‘whole’, because in truth, the answer might have damned him.

Elatra’s system mechanics were, at their core, a hot steaming pile of bullshit rules tenuously held together by superglue and prayers. It would have given a law practitioner from back home a migraine, a raging stiffy, or both. Little inconsistencies existed everywhere that a homegrown Elf might have internalized as normal, but that Rob the Earth Expat wasn’t satisfied with accepting. There were physiological issues such as how increasing the Strength in your legs didn’t make you run faster, but even moreso, Rob was discovering that a worrying amount of the system operated on nebulous intent. For example, his EXP Share transferred over ‘beneficial buff passives’, but what decided if something was beneficial? If he turned on Melancholy Resistance, who would be the one to label it accordingly? Him, or the system? Or both?

And once he figured out where the line was drawn, was it something he could use to his advantage?

Rob glared at the nail and willed himself to think of it as a part, not a whole. If the system’s universal arbitration was the only form of intent that mattered, then these mental hoops he was putting himself through would be meaningless. But if his intent mattered, even slightly, then all he had to do was convince himself for a brief instant and-

The nail disappeared in a sparkle of brilliant blue motes.

A savage grin spread across Rob’s face.

–

Rob stepped over the disassembled pieces of chair strewn about the floor and stretched, savoring the simple joy of being able to move his own limbs. He hadn’t stopped taking apart the wretched contraption once it had gotten small enough for him to Inventory wholesale; on the contrary, he’d made it a personal mission to leave the thing looking as close as possible to an upturned LEGO set. It was a masterpiece of construction, a genuine artifact that had survived a miniature apocalypse, and he had torn it apart with the power of his mind.

It was a victory made even sweeter by achieving it via pulling the wool over the system’s eyes. While Rob couldn’t prove that his foray into self-delusion had made a difference in Elatra decreeing that he could shove individual nails and screws into his Storage, on some level the outcome felt earned. He had turned the system’s weirdness against itself. It didn’t happen often, but every time he managed to stick it to the proverbial man, Rob was able to feel a little more like an autonomous actor instead of a hapless rube swept aside by the whims of fate and made to dance for its amusement.

And best of all, he hadn’t gotten a new Skill or complimentary system message for his achievement. The victory was wholly his, belonging to Rob, and only Rob.

Diplomacy cleared its throat.

And you too, obviously, Rob assured. You made a great on-the-spot therapist.

He focused his attention on the next obstacle in their path: the bars lining the front entrance of their cell. Power Slash, Bulk Up, and the Dwarven-edged steel of the Broken Shortsword quickly proved that the bars were perfunctory rather than performative. The prison’s defense budget had apparently splurged on its unbreakable holding chairs at the expense of the construction of the prison itself. As he exited his cell and lit a torch to banish the encroaching shadows, Rob idly wondered if he could’ve punched straight down through the floor if he possessed enough sheer destructive force. Alas, he was – mostly – a mere mortal, and would have to be satisfied with taking the stairs.

Rob’s footsteps echoed across stone as he made his way down the hallway, his nose ticked by unspoiled dust and the faint scent of mildew. His Heightened Senses picked up every absence of sound or life, a constant reaffirmation that he was truly alone. Neither he nor Diplomacy could muster up any bad jokes or peanut gallery comments as they traversed the prison; the sensation of oppressive isolation that pervaded the air was disconcerting enough that Rob was reconsidering his harsh judgment of some horror movie protagonists he’d laughed at. An atmosphere like this could trick anyone into making poor life choices. Like, for example, opening a door to a room because he just had to know what was behind it. And open it he did, as no one was around to stop him, and just because Diplomacy was the living embodiment of convincing arguments didn’t mean it was immune to morbid curiosity.

Both of them audibly gasped at the sight that lay waiting within. The room was small, little more than a broom closet, but the story its contents told after just a single glance could have filled an entire novel’s worth of emotion. Another Dwarven-made chair of imprisonment was inside, and this one’s captor hadn’t been as fortunate as Rob. Tattered, month-eaten rags shrouded a skeleton trapped in what had become its final resting place, the cramped interrogation room serving as its grave. Spiderwebs of cracks spread through a good half of the skeleton’s ‘body’, heavily implying that the prisoner hadn’t received the best of care in their confinement. Rob couldn’t tell whether the captive had been male or female, but by their estimated height of 4 feet and 10 inches, he had to assume that they were either a short human, or more likely – statistically speaking – a particularly short female Elf. This was a Human-run prison, after all.

A Human-run prison that would have become a ghost town after the Cataclysm was unleashed. The wardens would have evaporated into thin air, leaving its occupants trapped without anyone to feed them or set them free. They would have died slow, painful deaths via starvation, praying for a rescue that would never come as outside society nearly collapsed in on itself in the chaos following the ruination left behind by the Cataclysm.

Rob decided not to open any more random doors.

After some continued searching, he found a staircase and descended it with gusto, taking it three steps at a time. Anything that would put distance between himself and the mass grave masquerading as a floor. Thankfully, the next floor of whatever kind of building he’d been transported to – which he was now realizing might have served more functions than just being a prison – had strong similarities to a generic office building. He couldn’t immediately descend to the bottom level as the staircases weren’t linked, presumably to keep any captives from having a straight path to freedom in the event of a prison break, but despite his worries, exploring the next floor turned out to be a simple procedure. All he found were rooms filled with wooden desks and forgotten documents that no longer held any purpose or meaning. After what he’d just gone through, the sense of dull normalcy the sight inspired was a breath of fresh air. Stale, years-old fresh air belonging to a ghost town of a building, but fresh air nonetheless.

The only thing that came across as eerie was how close the floor came to emulating the vibe of an actual office building back on Earth. Everything from the layout of the desks, to the materials used in the construction of the various on-hand amenities, to the overall vibe he got while exploring, all reminded him heavily of the internship he’d taken at a shitty corporate job that never paid him and called his experience making coffee and copying papers to be a good resume builder. The architecture was more ‘medieval’ than an actual office building from Earth, but the uncannily similar atmosphere was present and unmistakable.

Rob found the next staircase without too much trouble. It led to another office-building-esque floor, with scattered sheets and empty seats. Seeing the vacant desks reminded him of how many lives had vanished in an instant when the Cataclysm was unleashed, but that was strictly preferable to finding more skeletons. The next staircase led him to an entirely different kind of floor, one with supply rooms filled with rusted weapons and beds covered by ragged sheets. He appeared to have stumbled upon the barracks, which meant he was getting closer to the bottom floor, if he hadn’t reached it already.

Then he found a cafeteria.

And a person.

A tall woman with long, wavy blonde hair was sitting at a lunch table and eating a sandwich. She was well over six feet tall, with a well-rounded form that managed to simultaneously be curvaceous and packed with muscle. After spending months among svelte, short, noodle-armed elves, the effect her appearance had on him was admittedly a little intimidating.

But not nearly as intimidating as her fingernails that were razor-tipped like claws, or the sharklike teeth she was using to rip apart her sandwich like a tiger tearing into a helpless gazelle, or the golden scales creeping up the sides of her cheeks, or the catlike eyes with vertical pupils which had finally noticed his presence and were staring directly at him, wide as saucers.

Uuuuuh. ‘Identify’.

Name: Female Dragonkin
Level: 24
Status Effects: Hungry (Mild), Confused (Advanced)
Description: A Dragonkin of the female persuasion. You’ve never met or seen one before, but, come on. Just look at her. She’s not a goddamn Harpy. Anyway, neither of you have any idea of why the other is there, and your very existence will likely be a revelatory bombshell which will turn her worldview on its head. Oh, and as a reminder, the Dragon Queen’s Declaration was the driving force behind the Scouring. Cheers!

The Dragonkin gently placed her sandwich onto her place, not taking her eyes off of him for an instant. Both of them stared in silence, waiting for the other to make the first move.

Diplomacy? Rob asked.

No idea, the Skill admitted. Wing it.

I mean, sure, okay. Rob raised his hand – eliciting a flinch from the Dragonkin – and gave her a single wave. “Hi there. My name is Rob. It’s nice to meet you.”

“What the fuck?”

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