41
Fergus looked a little worse for wear as he stumbled out of the curtain. Behind him, Jin Stimpleton limped with heavy gashes in his armor. His face looked like it’d taken a serious punch to the jaw.
Fulka wheeled through the curtain, her rifle in both hands. Blood caked the butt. She’d used it as a weapon when she ran out of cartridges.
Her clothes were sticky with gore.
“Oh!” Tania gave a loud gasp of surprise. “Look what the cat dragged in.”
A few titters scattered through the room. Milo shifted uncomfortably against the wall. How quickly, he thought, can people change their opinions.
Each new successful record Milo’s team broke was forcing the other students to accept the reality that his team was superior.
It had even become something of a joke.
And the insults Fergus flung at Milo which had once earned sniggers of their own, were now earning sighs or muttered observations that the young man was just jealous because his own team was often one of the last few to make it out.
“What happened to you?” Master Finklestern asked Jin, looking up at him with curiosity. “Electromancer Tanks usually cruise through the Pirate’s Cove. All those damp pirates make it easy to shock them all down.”
“Yeah…” The big man’s eyes flicked to Fergus, who clenched his jaw. Sighing, Stimpleton shook his head. “Well. We were trying a new tactic, I guess. It didn’t work out so great this time.”
Milo, sitting on the large chest they’d managed to drag through the portal, felt Fergus turn his head and glare at him.
He guessed, from having listened to some of their conversations which Click had recorded, that impatience had driven the young man to try going faster than he could handle. His desire to catch up to Milo forced him towards imitation.
“Well, if ya want some tips,” Tania called out. “Just ask.”
“Ah, go soak your head,” Fulka growled back. “Just because you got a nine ranking, it don’t mean you gotta look down on us. We were doing just fine until the Bosun went nuts.”
“The Bosun?” Master Finklestern looked even more surprised. “You triggered the Bosun event? You have to knock on his door to bring him out. Why would you do that?”
“It was an accident,” Fulka said, flushing bright red, not looking at Fergus.
Fergus grimaced. “I tripped while we were passing the door.”
“And it seems just bumping your shoulder into it counts as a knock,” Stimpleton said.
“Huh.” Master Garmstooth couldn’t help but show a small grin. “That’s gotta be some of the worst luck I ever heard of.”
“You thought he was hard?” Tania gawped at them. “Are you on the level here?”
“You got a big mouth!” Fulka snarled. “If you’re so high and mighty, why didn’t you go rapping on his door?”
Tania put her hands on her hips. “What do ya mean, sister? We always do a clean sweep. Selma here wiped the floor with his face. And we took out the First Mate and his jolly little deck hands. We even chopped the Ship’s Cook.”
“What?”
“You heard right.” Tania grinned at her. “That’s what happens when you’re in a first-rate team like ours. You oughtta try it some time.”
“You killed the First Mate?” Stimpleton actually looked surprised.
“He wasn’t so bad,” Selma put in. She was squatting in front of Milo in a way which she knew was showing him her goods. Her sword lay flat across her thighs. She tapped the heavy blade. “Only took a couple of swings.”
“Bullshit you got him,” Fergus scowled. “The First Mate uses lightning novas. They knock out anyone they touch.
“They did sting a bit,” Selma admitted, rubbing her wrist. “But Milo had an idea on how to deal with it. It worked out alright.”
“An idea?” Master Garmstooth’s nose twitched. “What did you do?”
“I tied wires around our ankle,” Milo said with a shrug as Selma showed she was still wearing hers. “They channeled most of the lightning into the ground.”
“Ha!” The old teacher looked delighted. “That’s novel. How did you think to do that?”
“I was a clocker,” Milo said. He had to work to keep the bitterness out of his voice.
“Before I was brought here. We worked with all kinds of clocks. Old dwarven ones are still around. They can have little triggers in them which hit you with little jolts if you’re not careful.
It hurts. So, we wrap copper wires around our wrist and connect it to the bench.
It gives the lightning somewhere to go.”
“Amazing. Please write that down and send me a report.”
“Sure.”
“Wire?” Stimpleton frowned. “That’s it? That let you kill the First Mate?”
“Easy peasy,” Tania said. She shot Milo an affectionate look. “That’s why we like him. He’s a real thinker is Milo. An egghead and a half! If it weren’t for him, we’d have died too many times to count.”
Selma nodded. “He’s definitely the brains of our operation.”
“This is making me sick.” Fergus pushed himself towards the exit. “You don’t fool me, normie. But you just wait. You can’t cheat your way forever. Sooner or later, everyone’s gonna know what you and me know.”
“You’re just a bitter old creep,” Tania threw at him.
Stimpleton paused in front of them. “You really took out the First Mate? You’re not pulling my leg?”
“Yeah,” Milo said. He reached into his bag and pulled out a scrap of cloth with a badge on it. Tania had torn it from the corpse and tossed it to him to keep as a memento. There was a room in the Workshop she’d cleared out and was turning into a grisly trophy room. “Took this off him.”
Stimpleton squinted at it, then nodded.
Sighed.
“I didn’t know lightning could be stopped like that.”
“It’s not completely stopped,” Selma told him. “It still rattles your teeth. It’s just not as powerful.”
“Huh.” Stimpleton ran his fingers through his hair and started plodding after Fergus without another word.
Milo watched him go.
“Hey, Milo?” Belt crossed his heavy arms and tried to look nonchalant. “What do you think about the next dungeon? Got anything you wanna share?”
Smiling up at him, Milo’s eyes twinkled. “Talk to Tania about it.”
“That’s right, buster,” Tania grinned. Then she raised her voice. “I’m sure we can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement…”
“You want to sell information?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“I don’t know.” He rubbed his jaw. “It just sounds kind of wrong.”
“It’s not cheating,” she said. She looked to Master Garmstooth. “Is it?”
“Not as far as I know,” he said. “Actually, it’s not uncommon for some of the better strategists in the past to do the same.”
“There ya go!” She swiveled on her heels. “You heard the man. It ain’t cheating. So, if you wanna get a peek at what’s in that special little noggin of Milo’s, then come see me tomorrow.”
After that, she swept Milo and Selma from the Dungeon Hall and headed towards the baths.
Once inside, they undressed, washed themselves down, and then slid into a large bath big enough for around six people. He sank into the steaming heat and sighed as he stared up at the ceiling.
Tania dropped down so only her eyes were above the water.
Green eyes that were fixed on him.
Beside her, Selma closed her eyes and let the heat sink through the Golemskin and into her stressed gears.
He’d wondered if they really enjoyed the baths as much as he had. They assured him they did. The two had explained to him that the heat actually did feel good. That it warmed the grease and oil which lubricated their components.
His mind wandered to a memory of a dwarf in one recording.
He was ranting about something. The quality of the Golemskin, Milo suspected. While he was ranting, he was gripping the breast of a golem and squeezing it to show what the problem was.
Milo couldn’t see the problem.
But whatever it was, it had agitated the dwarf.
Milo had turned off the recording as soon as the dwarf started thumbing the golem’s privates and shouting at the screen.
Still, he wished he understood what was frustrating the dwarf so much.
It might help him with understanding what he was doing with the golems. A lot of times he felt more like an assembly hand than an engineer. An engineer should know a lot more about what he was doing, Milo thought.
Even a clocker knew about clocks.
He wanted to know more. He’d tried to know more.
But he was blocked each time by his inability to understand the language without Fed’s guiding hand.
Fed had also refused to translate the spoken or written dwarven language. The translation, the Workshop explained, was only to allow Milo a chance to communicate with the constructs he created.
And to use the tools and functions of the Workshop.
Anything else required access to the Prime.
A hand slid up his thigh.
“Stop that,” he said, staring dreamily at the ceiling.
“Why?”
“I’m thinking.”
“You’re always thinking. It’ll give ya brain cancer, ya know.”
“I know.” He sighed. “I know.”