Chapter 83 - White Crystals

  My outstretched fingers were closing on the creature’s blackened, crispy body. Between the gasoline and the spells, we’d done a serious number on the thing. It smelled and looked something like badly burnt toast. I felt like I ought to be looking around for the smoke detector or something.

  As soon as my fingers brushed its charred body, two crystals popped out into my hand. I closed my fingers over the stones and then backed away as quickly as I could.

  When Alex went to approach me I held up my other hand toward him. “Better give it a minute, just to be sure I didn’t pick up anything when I touched it, right?”

  He nodded. “Smart call. How do you feel?”

  “So far, so good.”

  “We’ll give it two minutes, then. Just to be certain you’re not contagious,” Alex replied, glancing at a watch on his wrist. “What did it drop?”

  “Where did you get a working watch, anyway?” I asked.

  “There was a watch repair store downtown. They had a few old wind-up watches in stock, and I took them all back to base with me,” Alex replied with a grin. “Why, you want one?”

  “Maybe!” I chuckled. “Although maybe not. I’ve been enjoying the lack of structure more than I’d realized, I think.”

  “You let me know. Meanwhile, the crystals?”

  I unclenched my hand and checked out the stones resting there. It was unusual for a creature to drop more than one. I’d only seen that from ‘boss’ monsters before, like the Karabos leader. It was weird to see more than one of them, but I supposed this guy probably counted as a ‘boss.’ Between its tier eight status and how deadly the creature was, it felt like a reasonable term to use.

  But these crystals were unusual for more reasons than just their number. They were also white. I’d seen a lot of crystals before, in grey, black, green, blue, clear, and other colors. I hadn’t seen any white ones until now. As I examined the stones to see what they did, my eyes went very round.

  “They’re white stones, and holy crap, they’re strong,” I told him. “One is a tier eight crystal that grants a Healing spell. The other is only tier five, but grants Cleanse. Have you seen either of those before?”

  Alex looked excited. “Just the Healing. We have a couple of those. They dropped from some of the Karabos. I’m guessing they were medics, or something like that. But we don’t have many and they’re all low tier. A tier eight, you said?”

  I nodded.

  “That’s going to save a lot of lives,” Alex went on. “As for the other, I haven’t seen one yet. But it seems like white stones are health and healing focused, and with a name like Cleanse, I’m guessing it clears bad stuff like poison, disease, or other sorts of bad effects.”

  “Like maybe fungal infections?” I asked, glancing over at Roberts’s body.

  “It wouldn’t shock me,” Alex replied. “This could be huge. If fungus monsters drop white crystals, we might have just found a source of healing here. If there are more creatures inside the building and they all drop white stones, we can save a lot of lives.”

  His people looked a little nervous about that idea. Ruiz chimed in. “Maybe, but only if we live through it. Roberts died very fast. If we run into a pack of those things, whoever is casting the Cleanse or whatever is going to have their work cut out for them.”

  “Good point. We need someone with a cool head under fire to take on that stone,” Alex said.

  “Maybe you ought to take it, boss?” Dara said.

  I half expected him to agree. It wasn’t the worst call, after all. Alex had a high Will, which meant he could cast a lot of spells. We’d want someone with a strong Will score as healer.

  But Alex shook his head. “I think I’m too valuable for my combat powers still. We’d want someone who didn’t have many attack spells, so they’d be able to save their mana for Healing and Cleansing people as needed. The last thing we’d want is for me to be stuck choosing between casting Lightning Bolt to save someone now, or saving the mana for a critical Cleanse later.”

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  After a brief discussion, Alex sent Ruiz and Dara back to City Hall with orders to pick up two more squads of their top ranked people and a stack of gas masks. He specifically asked for Marion to come along, which made me wonder if he had her in mind for the white stones. It seemed like a reasonable call, if so. Marion had an attack spell, but it was relatively low rank. Boosting her up with the tier eight Healing spell would be an incredible power-up.

  While we waited for them to return, I went up to Roberts’s body and collected all of his stones. Unlike monsters, if you touched a person who’d died, you got all the stones they had collected. I wondered if that might be true for creatures that had gained extra stones as well, or if it was something specific only to humans.

  Everything Roberts had socketed poured into my palm when I touched his still form. He’d had three stones, for Strength, Stamina, and Regeneration. I waited the two minutes Alex had decided was the safety mark before approaching him and handing the crystals over.

  “Thanks for collecting them,” Alex said. “I’ll make sure they get to people who will use them.”

  “No worries. Sorry about your man, though,” I replied. “That was horrible to see. I can’t imagine how shitty it must have been to experience it, though.”

  “Agreed. I’m hoping the gas masks will work to keep people safe,” Alex said. “We lose people daily, unfortunately. It’s become a regular thing. Every evening, we have a roll for those who fell that day. We’ve done it every day since the Karabos retreated, and there hasn’t been a single day without deaths. I’m looking forward to the first day I don’t have to list any names off in the evening, and those white stones might just be the way to make that happen.”

  “You think they’ll make that big a difference?” I asked.

  Alex nodded. “For sure. We’re assuming Cleanse would have worked on those spores, so having someone in the group with Cleanse might have saved his life. Even a Healing spell might have kept him alive long enough for his body to fight off the infection or something. And that’s one of the weirdest deaths I’ve seen here. Usually, it’s something like a giant bird swooping down and stabbing someone through the chest with its beak, like happened yesterday. That woman took fifteen minutes to die.”

  I winced. When Alex told me about the chicken dinner he had planned, it hadn’t occurred to me that there might have been a mortal cost to the feast. I hadn’t asked. He hadn’t offered the information, before. But now I knew.

  “You’re planning to go in there and see if you can get more white stones, then,” I said. It wasn’t a question. I could see the answer written all over his face.

  “Absolutely. This is a major opportunity for us all. I hope you’ll join me?”

  “I’ll help, of course. But…you’re going in personally? Are you sure it’s a good idea to risk yourself like that?” I asked.

  If Alex died, what happened to his Domain? When I’d killed the Karabos leader, the control stone had dropped from his body when I touched it, just like any of the other magical stones. It stood to reason that the results of Alex’s death might be similar.

  “We’ll have a high-rank healer with us,” Alex replied. “But there’s always risk. Every time I leave City Hall, there’s a risk I won’t make it back. I can’t hide behind those walls, though. My people need to see me out and about. Surely, that makes sense to you, right?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I understand.”

  “If I do die, promise me you’ll help take care of my people, okay?” Alex said. “I want to make sure they have a leader worth following, if I’m not there anymore.”

  The whole idea of me taking over a Domain rankled. It wasn’t a job or responsibility that I wanted. I’d much prefer to never be forced into a leadership position again. All the same, with Alex asking like that, what else was I supposed to do? I gave him another nod, which seemed to satisfy him.

  A few minutes later, the team arrived from his base, led by Ruiz and Marion. They’d brought a total of twenty more people with them, all of them tier three or higher, which had to be a sizable chunk of Alex’s top-tier fighting force.

  As I’d predicted, he gave the white stones to Marion. She had a free socket, and she dropped one in, then the other, instantly boosting her up to tier eight. After me, she was now the second highest tier person in Boston, at least as far as we knew.

  “Wow, this is… This is just a lot,” Marion said. She staggered under the massive influx of information she was receiving from the stones. Alex took her arm and helped her sit on a chunk of stone nearby. “Healing is pretty straightforward in terms of effect, but the raw amount of information is impressive. Also, headache inducing. Cleanse is just what you’d thought. It should heal most types of poison and infection. It’ll even clean dirt and stuff out of wounds. I wish we’d had these stones a few days ago!”

  “I know,” Alex told her, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Me too.”

  With the white stones socketed, Alex set about making a group to invade the building. He and I were both in, as was Dara. We wanted plenty of people with strong ranged attacks. Marion was obviously coming, since she could heal the fungal infection attacks. Alex asked for volunteers from the rest, and over a dozen hands shot up.

  I was impressed by that. Even with Roberts’s body burned to a crisp on the stone steps in front of us, these people clearly trusted him. Maybe some of that was his Charisma. I’d noticed that Alex had ranked that up some, just as I had. Charisma stones seemed to make people like and trust you more, and listen more to what you had to say. It wasn’t mind control, but it was a definite advantage for someone like him who was leading forces into battle on the regular.

  Even without the Charisma, I think most of those people would have volunteered. It was something about the way those hands shot up without hesitation. They believed in Alex.

  Alex picked six more fighters from the crowd to join us. Ruiz was one. The others were all veterans of the Karabos invasion, too—experienced fighters who knew how to work together. Their names were Anderson, Johnson, Clark, Kelly, and Rodriguez. All of them were tier four or five, so they ought to have at least a fighting chance against whatever we ran into down there.

  With the team assembled, we went up the steps into the uncanny structure, as prepared as we were going to be to face whatever awaited us below.