Warbreaker's Risk: A LitRPG Apocalypse Adventure (The Connected System Book 2), page 41
“No matter,” Freyja said after a minute. “It is enough that it has happened.”
“Why are you here?” Thor asked.
Freyja shrugged.
“Just checking in.”
“Hoping to learn what I may have done so you could duplicate it for your followers?”
“So you do admit to changing the mortal?”
“No. You have accused me of doing it, I have not said yes or no. I merely posted a hypothetical based on your accusation.”
Freyja laughed.
“That is so unlike The Storm,” she pointed out. “You are usually so elemental in your reactions.”
Thor shrugged. He hated playing these games.
“But you are right,” she said. “I was curious what you had done.”
“Why did you take his mate?” Thor asked, shifting the subject.
If Freyja was caught off guard, she didn’t show it. Her face remained impassive. But she had always been better at these games.
“Because I knew which of the mortals you had toyed with.”
“How did…?” he started but waved it away. “Knowledge,” he growled.
Freyja nodded.
Thor wondered how many others the Concept of Knowledge, now calling himself Odin the All-Father, had told. Probably no others beyond Freyja. The two did tend to work closely together. If the Divine Beings hadn’t evolved past the need for relationships, Thor would have thought them in one.
Maybe they were.
“So now I have a connection to your chosen mortal,” Freyja continued. “Consider it a long-term investment in whatever you hope to accomplish.”
Thor just grunted. It was as he had feared.
“But they are not together,” he said. “Your follower will not have a hold over my follower.”
“Not yet, but who knows,” Freyja said with a smile.
Thor wondered how many rules she was breaking and how she was getting away with it. He had been very careful not to go against any of the Connection’s rules. But Freyja, taking a specific mortal away to her Proving Grounds, how many rules were bent for that? And the Proving Grounds, that had been entirely her doing. Every bit of it. There was no set rule against making a Proving Ground, but there was one against forcibly moving newly Connected to one against their will.
How had Freyja done it?
“The future should be interesting,” she said, and then was gone.
All trace of his fellow Divine Being was gone as if she had never been there. Thor still scanned the great hall, the village, and the surrounding plains and forests for a hundred miles. Not a trace of Freyja remained.
She was gone to wherever her base on Earth was.
Thor sighed, leaning back in his throne. He had hoped he’d have more time to plan and get all his pieces lined up. He was not as good at this as Freyja or many of the others. This was all new for him. He’d hoped it would have been so unexpected no one would have noticed. He should have known Odin would discover what he had done.
There was no help for it now. Thor would just have to continue with his plans and put what roadblocks he could in Freyja’s own plans. There was no way he was going to let one of her followers have any control over one of his.
Freyja appeared in the middle of the throne room in her chosen camp. Unlike Thor, Freyja enjoyed the ambiance that came with being a God to the mortals of Earth. Her home within her new city was large and didn’t fit the aesthetic that the chosen forms of the Divine Beings had. The city had been called Rome. She had learned it had once, centuries ago, been the capital of the largest empire this world had ever seen.
A fitting place for her to make her home.
Most of the city was in ruins—the results of the first few days of the Connection. Earthquakes had collapsed buildings and sunken streets, revealing the old city underneath. Ruins that had become a giant City Dungeon.
Such things were rare. It took an incredible amount of Spirit to collect to form a City Dungeon, and the area had to have been the site of much life. The old ruins had provided plenty of that.
She had been disappointed when she learned it couldn’t be her Proving Grounds.
But it was serving its purpose, providing a place for the survivors in the city to Level.
It helped that her followers, the ones that had come with her, were pushing and prodding the survivors to enter the Dungeon and Level. There were also plenty of monsters in the surrounding ruins for her new people to prove themselves on. Not that everyone in the city would accept her as a Patron. None were high enough level yet to accept a Patron, and none were a special case like Thor’s chosen or her Valkyries, and she doubted they all thought favorably of her. Not after her refusal to help them.
There had been plenty of begging her to save them once they realized a being of her power was among them.
Her home had been a beacon.
Freyja supposed she could have chosen something like Thor’s or one of the others. Something lesser. But that would not be true to herself.
The city of millions, now reduced to thousands, had been devastated but only the modern parts. Not surprising to Freyja, the old ruins of that ancient civilization, those that had been above ground, had not been touched by the destruction of the Connection. They had survived, and in some cases, been restored to their former and original glory.
Freyja had selected one such place to make her home. The Flavian Palace. There were other names, there always was, but that was the one that the survivors most often used.
It wasn’t the largest of her many homes across the Connected Realms or the most beautiful. But for this backwater of a world, and for the relatively short time her attention would be on it, the Palace would do.
Especially with the changes she would be making.
The corridors were filled with her people, those that had followed from her other holdings. They all bowed as she passed, none speaking. None daring to.
She entered the throne room, hands moving over the statues lining the walls.
“I know you are here,” she said, not bothering to look.
“I wasn’t trying to hide,” a voice said from the other side, at once masculine and feminine.
“You are always trying to hide,” Freyja said, not bothering to look toward the sound of the voice.
Loki would be up to their normal tricks and wouldn’t materialize. She expected The Trickster to answer from somewhere else in the room.
“Not always,” Loki answered, surprising Freyja by being in the same place. “Did your visit go well?”
“About as expected. The Storm is as always.”
“So you got nothing from him?” Loki asked.
“No confirmation, but I believe your assumption was correct. Somehow The Storm gave his Chosen a Trait.”
There was silence.
Freyja hated dealing with The Trickster, they all did. It was impossible, even for someone of Freyja’s experience and Skills, to know when the one now called Loki was lying. So Freyja just accepted everything The Trickster said as a lie.
“I wonder how it was done,” Loki finally said.
“I wonder too.”
“So that you could duplicate it,” Loki teased.
Freyja did not answer. They had guessed correctly. All of the Divine Beings would be interested in knowing how Thor had accomplished it. The Connected System had specific rules, and while they all tried to push those boundaries, they all typically failed. There were, of course, loopholes to be exploited. One of those was how Freyja was able to get her Valkyries so early in a Connection.
The name of the Class was different across the Connected Realms, each planet having a different name, but the role and function of the Class were the same. They were not just Freyja’s chosen, but also her choosers.
The name from this Realm didn’t quite match what she envisioned the Class to be, but there was some strength to the existing name, and it was close enough. Freyja could use it. They were not the choosers of the dead but the choosers of the living.
Freyja’s Concept allowed her to choose many and not just a few like the others were confined to. She was the Concept of Love, after all. Not just love, but everything that was affected by it. Sex, fertility, growth, and to an extent, even death. There was a lot bound into the Concept of Love, making her the second most powerful of all the Divine Beings.
“And what of your plans,” she asked when Loki had not spoken in a while.
She got no response. Her senses went out, not finding The Trickster anywhere.
Freyja knew that Loki was somehow involved with what Thor had done. She wasn’t sure how. Something like giving a Trait to a newly Connected was beyond Loki’s powers. But then, there was not much that Loki couldn’t accomplish. That one was always scheming.
In many ways, Loki was more powerful than they appeared. There were not many followers spread out across the Connected Realms, but because of their Concept, Loki was almost constantly being followed, just now acknowledged.
Which was a big difference and kept Loki’s power levels relatively weak compared to all the others. But none would dare purposefully go against the Trickster.
What game was Loki playing, Freyja wondered, turning and leaving the throne room. She had some followers waiting for her in what she had taken as her avatar’s chamber. They would provide a pleasant diversion.
The others had grown beyond the need for relationships and the intimate joining of two souls. She had not.
She was the Concept of Love, after all.
Chapter Forty-Four
Loch let the rest extend from his originally planned thirty minutes to an hour. Not that he could really tell the passing of time in the Dungeon. Julia looked like she needed it, and more. The Dungeon was strenuous, but he’d been through it before. Harper and Piper were holding up better than the older woman but had been starting to show signs of fatigue. Brian hadn’t complained, but Loch had seen small signs in the big man.
A longer rest was good.
He was still impatient to get it over with.
Loch was angry with himself, thinking back to his attitude in the Challenge Dungeon and now this Dungeon. Then he had wanted to get the Dungeon over with to get out of it. He wanted his girls to survive, and pushed them through so they would grow stronger to be able to survive the Dungeon and the other dangers they would encounter. Now, they were running this Dungeon not to survive but just to grow and learn. To gain Resources.
The threat of death was still there, but they weren’t risking it because they had to. They were risking it because they wanted to. Loch could have easily sent some of the others into the Dungeon as a party. He didn’t need to be the first one to run it. Didn’t need to have Harper or Piper along. It might have even been better if the three of them, the highest Levels around, hadn’t entered the Dungeon.
It might have been easier for Brian and Julia if Davis, Jenny, and Darren had been their party members. The whole group would be gaining more experience since Loch and the girls weren’t nerfing the gains.
He had said it made sense for him to go, being the highest Level. But did it really?
In some circumstances, that would have been true.
Not in a Dungeon, not if the scaling worked like Cerie had said.
A party of all Levels Four and Five would have been fighting monsters just a little higher, gaining them a lot of experience for each kill. With Loch’s Nineteen, Harper’s Eleven, and Piper’s Nine, it was skewing the Levels in the dungeon, making the fights tougher for those at Level Five, and because Loch was a higher Level than most things in the Dungeon, they weren’t getting as much experience as they could.
There really hadn’t been a reason for Loch to be the first one into the Dungeon.
He’d just wanted to be.
And that was what was making him angry.
He sat back against the rough stone wall, barely able to feel it through the thick leather of his Challenger’s Armor, looking out at the green glowing pond. He had to keep reminding himself that it wasn’t a game. It was life.
Didn’t he have a responsibility to those outside?
It had been his idea to move to the school. It was a more secure location, and the idea was sound, but shouldn’t he be out there helping with the move? Working with others to make the school even more secure? There were a lot of windows to board up or provide some other means of protection.
Ed Turner could take care of most of the tasks. Organizing the food and handing out supplies, that kind of thing. But Loch was the strongest. He should be there as a guard, at the very least, helping set up defenses. Exploring the area more, making sure there weren’t any more monsters like that fossa. Or at least, being there in case something like that showed up.
Instead, he had chosen to run the Dungeon.
Putting lower Levels in more danger.
Brian and Julia were probably Leveling faster than if they were in a more equal group. He hoped. But they were in more danger. Brian was tanking monsters twice his Level. He was holding his own so far but Loch knew the Dungeon was only going to get tougher.
He should call it. Bring the group out of the Dungeon.
The Dungeon needed to be cleared or it would eventually overflow, but Cerie had said that could be months or even years before it happened. They had time. There was no rush to clear the Dungeon now.
“Cerie,” he called out, catching the fairy’s attention.
Standing up, he motioned her to follow. All eyes were on the pair as Loch led her further from the group. About twenty feet away, he stepped behind a stalactite, waving the fairy closer.
“Is there a penalty for leaving a Dungeon early?”
She tilted her head, confusion crossing her features. The confusion turned to anger or frustration, Loch wasn’t sure which, before settling back on a neutral expression. She still didn’t answer. He knew she was wrestling with the commands coded into her by the Codex Band. She had said her priority was in making Piper stronger. There had already been conflict between father and Bonded Spirit over just what methods should be employed to make Piper stronger. Loch had thought it had been settled, with the fairy agreeing to follow his lead. Now it looked like Cerie didn’t agree.
Finally, the fairy sighed.
“The only penalty for running out of a Dungeon before clearing it is that the party members will not be able to reenter the Dungeon for a year.”
Loch nodded. It didn’t seem that bad, but in some ways, it was a very stiff penalty. The party members would possibly miss out on the rewards from that Dungeon completely. They could out Level it within that year. Or it could stunt their growth as they wouldn’t benefit from the increased experience gain that came from a Dungeon run.
And possibly, in some Clans, there would be a loss of honor and status.
Which, for some, would be the worst penalty.
“Thank you.”
He walked back to the others. They were all standing, watching, knowing by his talking privately with Cerie that something was going on.
“I think this was a mistake,” he said, looking at each of them. “I shouldn’t have come into this Dungeon with you.”
“But we wouldn’t make it without you,” Julia said, fear and confusion in her voice.
“The monsters are only this high Level because of me,” Loch said, glancing at Cerie.
“He is correct about that,” she said. “If a group of Levels Four and Five had entered, the monsters would average around Level Eight with the boss monsters”—Cerie rolled her eyes using Loch’s gaming term—“would be Level Ten. The Dungeon would be tough, life-threatening as all Dungeons are, but there wouldn’t be any monsters above Level Ten.”
“But they,” Harper said, pointing to Brian and Julia, “wouldn’t have gained as much?”
“Correct. They are benefitting from the higher-Leveled monsters, even with the Spirit gain penalty Lord Lochlan’s high Levell is causing. If they had been in an equal-Level party, gaining a Level in a Dungeon like this would be considered quite good. Two Levels would be an amazing run.”
Harper focused on her father, looking as serious as Loch had ever seen her.
“You’re going to tell us that we’re leaving, aren’t you?”
Loch nodded.
Harper held up two fingers.
“It’s only going to get tougher,” she said, still focused on Loch. “If you and I weren’t here, even with a full party, this room would be a challenge for any group. I get it. You want to protect us. But,”—she glared at Loch, waiting for him to interrupt, but he didn’t—“one. We all volunteered. If you want to leave, it should be by vote.” She lowered a finger. Loch was glad that the remaining one wasn’t her middle finger. “Two. This is a dangerous world. We need to learn to face those dangers. A Dungeon is a controlled environment.” She glanced at Cerie, who nodded. “But creatures like the fossa can appear outside at any time. We all need to be ready to take on tougher enemies.” She lowered the second finger. “This is training for that. We need to get stronger to survive.”
Loch smiled. She’d narrowed down his arguments to two points and in a way that he couldn’t refute. She was using his own words against him. The threat of the dangers out there and needing to get stronger. Not wanting to be a dictator because of his power.
There wasn’t anything he could say to counter her.
“Wow,” Loch said. “That was… I’m proud of you, Harper.”
She smiled.
“I’m my father’s daughter.”
Shaking his head and smiling, Loch looked to Brian and Julia.
“What do you think? Harper was right. It’s only going to get tougher.”
Brian shrugged.
“We’re here. Let’s keep going.”
Julia looked up at the big man and then at Piper. Loch could tell that she was wavering. She crossed her arms, holding herself tightly, looking down at the ground. Her fingers felt the fabric of the new robe she was wearing. Pulling her hands off her body, she looked down at them, at her palms, then the tops, back to the palms. She looked up at Loch.
