Chapter 94

  While Michael and Travis were away, people worked hard to keep Site 00 going. One such person was David, who had been asked—kindly, but with not much room to wiggle himself out of the assignment despite being the CEO of the whole company—to oversee the happenings at Redbud Ridge. The town was being swallowed up by mana, the invisible cloud engulfing more and more of the scattered houses and homesteads by the moment.

  Travis should have been there in person, but instead, it had been David who had been sent to oversee the very first official Candle Light operation of a somewhat large scale. David found it amusing, despite knowing full well what Travis was busy with. This was, after all, Travis’ domain and area of interest, not his own.

  This wasn’t to say he wasn’t qualified for the job. If one discounted Michael, Johanne, and now Travis, David was probably the strongest member of their budding organization. Things were changing; already Jennifer and Trevor were talking about a second expedition into the dungeon today, barely a day after the first successful delves. It would be a single team this time, selected among the ones who did not receive the challenge version of the second floor and tasked to clear it and report back.

  With the focus on powering up rather than just defeating the floor, they were soon bound to overtake David in terms of power.

  Honestly, David couldn’t wait for someone else to take the role of power-enforcer. He did enjoy his power, of course, but surely not the methods necessary to get it. The first time he entered the dungeon had been with Michael, and that had been all sorts of nice things: exhilarating, fun, dangerous, but the sort of danger that gets adrenaline pumping. Then, at Travis’ insistence, he had gone delving again. Alone this time, wanting to make use of the time dilation to get some work done in the Misty Valley. Too bad that he had to defeat the first floor to get there, a task that proved much harder to do without Michael watching over him.

  It was as if he had gone to a completely different place. Without Michael’s aura shielding him from the dungeon’s effects—or at least this is how Johanne explained it—he faced the full brunt of it. It terrified him to the point he thought he was hearing voices, and he almost succumbed to the weak goblins of the first room. He had been caught unaware and recovered quickly, but he had also never set foot in the dungeon ever since.

  On one hand, let someone else deal with that horrible place. He didn’t need to gather power, after all. His was an administrative position: he just needed enough power to not appear weak, but he hardly needed to be a powerhouse. On the other hand…

  Old age had been something he had resigned to for a long time. It was the inexorable passage of time, something nobody could avoid no matter how hard they struggled to keep their youth. He had been more fortunate than others, his strong body healthier than most people. His acceptance of his situation quickly waned after Michael healed him, though. All the signs of age had disappeared in an instant, things he had made his peace with and had come to accept as part of life, vanished. It made him realize just how bad the situation had gotten without him even realizing. Little things had stacked up, slowly, until he was a ball of hurt and malfunctioning organs.

  After Michael had healed him, David had enjoyed life again free of the burdens of old age—most of them, at least. But, he learned, reality is rarely so charitable, and now the aches and pains were returning. Each healing session was less effective than the previous at keeping them away, and its effects lasted for less time.

  What David had come to accept before was now unacceptable. And as he grew in power, he noticed after his first and second delve in the dungeon, the process had slowed down—for a while. Now it was going forward full speed again. Almost as if punishing him for being weak, scared, and spineless. Almost as if pushing him.

  What to do? Brave the dungeon or procrastinate? Because being old sucked, but being in the dungeon sucked even more. Sure, he could ask Michael for a boost, but he had seen the look in the young man’s eyes when talking about boosting people, like he was disgusted with even the notion of people asking for free power. Travis had managed to avoid asking by waiting until Michael took the initiative, not that the man cared about these things when power was involved.

  David did. Especially because he knew, as his other delves had shown, that he was perfectly capable of handling the dungeon’s monsters on his own. If only there wasn’t that fucking sense of dread…

  “To think we went full circle. Now I’m the one who doesn’t want to look weak in the other person’s eyes. The one who doesn’t want to disappoint. I suppose that’s what happens when your protégé becomes your boss and outgrows you.”

  “Mister Chestermill, sir,” a voice interrupted his inner monologue, pushing the dilemma to another time.

  “Bob,” David greeted, “fancy seeing you here.”

  The man nodded with a tight smile. “Got a promotion, sir.”

  David laughed and bantered with the man for a moment. Interestingly, Bob claimed that he would miss his old days as a chauffeur, so in response, David offered to talk to Travis and see if he could still be assigned to Michael whenever he moved around, like a bodyguard. Soon, however, the main topic of the conversation came up.

  “Unity engineers and Candle Light personnel have been here for three days. Not much time to set a proper foundation like the protocol would demand, but that’s the time we had. We made good use of it, sir.”

  “I can see that,” David commented. From their vantage point on a little hill, they could see the whole city center, barely a single road and two rows of houses. “It all went smoothly, I assume?”

  The man shrugged. “Candle Light was already here, undercover,” he told David, “while the more overt divisions of Unity corporation started doing work to improve the reputation of the company within the city.”

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  This much David knew, of course, being the one who had approved the budget and the proposals that had come from Travis—making sure not to include the more dubiously ethical ones, according to Michael’s wishes. Unity had volunteered to fix up the leaky, rusted aqueduct system of the city for free, and they would be the ones to repair it in perpetuity and for a much smaller fee than what the city paid to have leaky pipes. A thing made economically viable only because they were actually using Elemental Stones to supply water, and other elements to keep the pipes stable and insulated.

  They also bought and began to fix old homes, took over old failing businesses downtown without kicking the owners out, and started work on some of the less productive fields around the city, close to the woods. There they planned to test some magic for agriculture while letting the farmers keep most of the profit. Again, he knew that it was only possible because Unity did not need what would amount to small change: money that would instead turn a farmer’s life for the better. They would much rather have said farmer’s respect and admiration.

  For now. He wondered whether Travis had plans to change this approach down the line, and to what. What sort of discussions would crop up then? Would he be here to argue his side?

  David felt the muscles in his face tense at the thought, a sensation of heat spreading from his chest. He distracted himself with another matter: an anomaly had already popped up at the outskirts of the city near a creek.

  “Unity bought the land for cheap from an old farmer after a coal mine run-off made the whole field barren,” Bob explained. “The engineers thought it was a good place to test some of the capabilities of [Ghost Market] to clean up the finer contaminants, and if not, Johanne had other things to test to clean up the land. Then, all of a sudden, one of the rocks by the creek started talking.”

  “Talking?” David questioned, meeting Bob’s exasperated expression with amusement. “Odd. But hardly worth noting, no?”

  “Would be,” Bob stated, “except now Johanne sealed the area until she understands how it happened. She claims it will help project Icarus immensely, whatever that is.”

  David frowned. “I swear that woman is everywhere. It’s like she can split herself or something.”

  “Oh, she definitely can,” Bob confirmed confidently, although speaking much lower and watching the woods as if expecting the woman to pop out from behind a tree. He leaned in. “I got reports of people seeing her in all sorts of impossible places at the same time. You know what though? It’s not worth the headache. Sometimes I wish I was still just the boss’ driver.”

  “I get you,” David sympathized, using his old age and looks to mask his own thoughts and project confidence and calm. “What’s the plan with the field?”

  “We are giving it back to the farmer, for free. Minus the creek part, but we promised access to water to make up for the loss. He was… in tears, sir. He was in fucking tears. I never thought—”

  It was at that moment that a rather agitated operator burst into view, panting and sweating. At David’s urging, he frantically started talking about a problematic anomaly that had just popped up in the city proper. From where they stood, David could see the outline of the building in question, a fairly tall square of concrete and bricks, but there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with it.

  “It’s the inside, sir. It got all fucked up. People are trapped in there.”

  “Get me there immediately,” David ordered.

  In a matter of minutes, they were at the cordoned-off area. People were more confused than anything at the moment, but the delicate balance was quickly shattering as some were starting to demand explanations as to why a private company dared to block access to a building with red-and-white tape.

  Others were wondering where the police were, not knowing that David and Travis had already planned for things like this to happen and had instructed the local law enforcement accordingly. Surprisingly easy to do in such remote places, and with an Operator who could alter digital information with his mind, it was trivial, even.

  Among the mass of people, there were a few who had been brought out of the building thanks to the rapid intervention of Candle Light operators before the situation turned dire.

  “I don’t know, I… I…” a woman was hyperventilating as she cried into another woman’s bosom. “My husband is in there. They couldn’t get him out in time. The man who rescued me… he was… he was… he’s dead.”

  Many such conversations were happening all at once around them. From what David could understand, something had happened all of a sudden that turned the building into a death trap, and there were enough witnesses that the supernatural nature of the event couldn’t be kept hidden. The Operators had immediately sprung to action, and protocol drafted for this exact kind of situation was being followed. Instead of trying to hide and mislead, Candle Light would lean into the narrative and paint themselves as the saviors and champions of the people, sent by the benevolent Unity to help.

  Candle Light Operators would become, to their eyes, people who knew what was going on, the only people in the world the normal person could really count on when things like this happened. It would take a while for the narrative to stick, according to their communications expert, but this was the first and most crucial step. Better than any marketing campaign.

  David hated it. He wasn’t as soft as Michael was, but old age had softened him—apparently. He didn’t like the misleading and duplicitous nature of the plan Travis and the communication expert had concocted. This was a disaster, not an opportunity.

  “Twenty minutes before teams Welles and team Locke arrive, sir,” Bob supplied. “Jennifer is already here.”

  “Let me take over, thank you, Bob,” Jennifer interjected.

  Bob nodded and immediately switched to muscle grunt mode. His job wasn’t to coordinate the ongoing efforts but to keep the situation from blowing up, which he did splendidly.

  “I’ll make it quick,” Jennifer stated. “This is a clusterfuck. The building’s insides suddenly turned into a blender. Space makes no sense, there’re monsters and things in there I can’t even explain. A person was attacked by a candelabrum. Get it? We have three dead operators and fifteen people trapped inside, but it could have been much worse.”

  David nodded.

  “Now,” she continued, “we are waiting for the teams to arrive, and then we’ll start with the rescue operations. You,” she pointed a finger at his chest, “are very welcome to join.”

  “What about you?” David inquired. Surprisingly, he found the idea of venturing into a blender of death more tolerable than he’d have thought. The building simply didn’t have the aura of malice the dungeon had.

  “It’s all hands on deck, kind sir. I’m going in as soon as I’ve finished instructing the men out here. See you inside?”

  David nodded, determination on his face. “You bet.”

  He was going to prove you all wrong. He was not scared of action, he realized, he was scared of the dungeon.

  “That’s the spirit, mister CEO. Gonna be good publicity.”

  “I’m not doing it for that reason,” David declared, and he meant it. What he didn’t know was why he was throwing himself into it with such zeal. He couldn’t be that much interested in saving people, could he? He had never much cared for them in the past, after all, but that had all been before Michael.

  No. He knew the real reason. In places like that building, there was always the prospect of unforeseen opportunities. Who knew what magic could do? Perhaps, in there, lay in wait the perfect opportunity to power himself up—one that didn’t require him to enter the dungeon again.

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  Candle Light: CL-018, "Expanding Building"

  Magic Class: Silver

  Danger Rating: Copper

  Containment:

  CL-018, known as the "Expanding Building," is currently under observation within the recently expanded Area of Influence near Site-00, located in [REDACTED]. Due to the presence of discrete and easy to monitor access points and no recorded effects outside of the conventional boundaries of the building, containment is focused on preventing access to the interior of the building. Structural integrity is closely monitored for changes. Entrance is possible through pipes, ventilation ducts and by breaking the walls. The single exit makes strict monitoring currently unnecessary.

  Description:

  CL-018 manifests as a multi-story residential building that undergoes unpredictable internal spatial phenomena. These include sudden expansions resulting in a significantly larger internal volume than its external dimensions would suggest. Within the expanded space, normal directional rules do not apply. The building appears to be actively hostile to intruders, utilizing mutated animals and animated furniture in conjunction with its spatial effects to attempt to eliminate all interlopers.

  Incident Report:

  Candle Light operatives under the guise of Unity Corporation's engineering division, were already present in Redbud Ridge conducting infrastructure assessments and building community trust when the incident happened. The number of casualties is [REDACTED], including Candle Light personnel. It should be noted that, according to [REDACTED], a cover story is already in place and the families of the deceased will be taken care of in perpetuity.

  Addendum CL-018.01:

  Preliminary analysis indicates that the internal expansions are fueled by ambient mana converting into Space-oriented Elemental energy within the Area of Influence. The exact mechanism behind the expansions remains unknown. Further research is required to understand the building's behavior and potentially turn it into an asset.

  Addendum CL-018.02: “you mean to turn it into a prison, don’t you?”