Knives & Levels - Chapter 95

"The Frozen Academy," Colt said.

The rest of the group around the table fell quiet. They had made their way to the top of the White House office, though, like the rest of the White House, this was being stripped apart. The pieces were being taken and moved elsewhere, though Nate still used this place to hold meetings. Soon, it would transition away from that entirely.

For now, though, it was a barren place, with disused wood in corners and a haphazard folding table that had been erected in the middle along with wooden chairs lining it.

Not the most distinguished place for what it once was, but it suited it enough.

Now that the City Council had gotten their business together and were in the process of moving the city administration to the outsides of the stadium, this place’s days were numbered.

Colt saw some irony in getting together all the people who helped defeat Denny back in the space he used to rule the city from, but it didn't matter all that much.

His friends looked at him, some of their eyes honed in, focused. The fact that they had managed to discover the dungeon that was causing them so many problems and would now confront it was a revelation, to be sure.

"So what exactly did your quest say?" Sarah asked, turning her attention to Nate. His quest was why they knew what the dungeon was called. Not even the scout had been able to get the dungeon’s name. Leon had only been able to determine the rank due to the advanced level of a C-ranked dungeon, which made it especially dangerous.

The name Frozen Academy suggested a correlation with the physical space it took up in the city.

Nate hummed to himself as he looked at them, as if he were playing back memories. Then, his eyes glazed over slightly as Colt was sure he had navigated through his status screen and went to the quest information.

"Not much," Nate said, looking at the screen in his mind. “It goes over the details of saying that I need to put the Celestial Seed to rest, and that's it. Wish I could give more. It doesn't sound good. Whatever the Celestial Seed is, and the fact that it ties to Csaba means it will be significant to contend with." Nate left that warning hanging in the air.

Celestial Seed? Colt couldn’t fathom what it meant, other than some star-like power that reminded him of Csaba.

The circumstances were that they simply had to confront it. Or flee, Colt thought as he looked at the rest of his group. Sarah, Julia, Nate…

Even Nick, who was busy brooding in the corner. Despite their allowance of him back into their group and his recruitment to the dungeon—and therefore, right now, the necessity that he be part of their meeting as they went over the information they had and made their plans for the day—he didn't speak much.

He wasn't thankful. He was barely cooperative. He was a man living like he was half alive. One part of him, Colt figured, was still in his memories of betrayal. Or maybe he looked forward to getting free from their grip and viewed this as his last act of service.

The most important part was that Nate had brought him along, and Nick had shown up, even if his position in the group was still awkward and forced.

Colt considered the information.

"Regardless," Colt said, "we have to go inside and see what's in this dungeon. As we all know, there’s an alternative to running from this, but I can’t let an opportunity like this pass. For me, this is something we must do, and it will help the people here.”

Nate spoke up next. "I won’t hesitate either, even though my quest makes me believe it will be much more dangerous than we initially predicted. As we all know, what encompasses a dungeon range is still limited in knowledge. The number of dungeons that have been completed in this city hasn’t even reached a hundred.”

Colt cocked his head at that.

“I’ve been reading through the old data collected from Denny’s previous expeditions. Even with the scout guidance, they varied greatly in actual danger. For all we know, this place could be the size of an academy, or as big as the place we fought Csaba,” Nate answered.

"But it's not an arena," Sarah spoke up. "We know from the name it's an academy. A school. A frozen school. So we should assume that size, it only makes sense.”

"What? How big exactly is an academy?" Julia said. "Vanderbilt was decently sized, but aren't there some really massive ones out there? I remember reading books about academies that seemed to sprawl a whole city. And if it's an academy, is it the academy alone? Why not the city around the academy, too?”

No one answered that question because there was no answer. The truth was they would have to go in to see, and nobody had enough information about dungeons to make more than guesses.

This planning mostly revolved around timing. “How much time before we go in?” Colt asked

It was a good question. They could try to prepare. They might find time to gather levels, slay monsters, and progress their own personal strength. But how far could that be?

Could he progress his strength enough in that time to matter? They were weighing the risks of more dangerous monsters appearing, versus pushing their limits with every day now that they had flagged the dungeon.

For Colt, Momentum was still far from reaching the level of balance it needed with Movement. Even if he had a week to train—and he thought a week was stretching it—he didn't think he could move it to the next level. The truth was he grew best when pushed to his limits, and his constraints were tested in ways they hadn't been before.

This C-ranked dungeon represented the greatest threat he'd seen in this new world. All the bosses he'd conquered and the monsters he'd slain in Nashville's haunted forest grounds—if the raiding system was to be believed about this place—didn't stack up. This was something else entirely.

Nate sighed. "Well, I'll be the one who's pragmatic here. We're going into an unknown threat, a danger higher than any we've faced before. The best perspective is to ensure you have all your affairs in order in the town,” he looked around at all of them. "The election is set to commence. I don't know how it will go. The candidates have a period of two weeks to make their bid and make themselves known to the general public, that leaves me with very little work that someone else couldn't do. So, I’m in favor of going in as soon as possible. There is not much else I can do to prepare.”

The way Nate said that, Colt knew he had reached the end of his city management career. Though Nate had expressed desires to set down roots here, Colt didn't imagine Nate would retire and help run the city council. The fact that he had done all this work to offload it to someone else instead of taking it over himself spoke volumes.

Colt ran through that thought for a second. What would he have done if Nate had desired to take control? He had trusted the man. Although they had condemned Denny for having an iron grasp, he knew Nate would certainly not act the same way, at least he hoped not, given everything they'd been through together. Nate had earned a level of trust that no one in Colt's life, except for his father, had.

What would he have done if Nate wanted to carve out power?

He probably would have let him do it. The fact that Nate hadn't, and was even now looking eager to get away, said everything that needed to be said.

The rest of the group looked at each other. Julia was the next to speak. "Well, I don't really have much. I'm not looking at this like we're gonna die, like Nate just said. I think we'll be fine. But I haven't been helping as much as you guys have around the city. So I don’t have much here to wait on.”

That was true. Julia, like Colt, knew she didn't have much for management. 

Unlike them, Sarah had been helping with construction efforts, leading people, and coordinating groups to assemble new buildings. It was actually partly her responsibility for stripping the White House, as it had been her idea to get rid of the previous throne of power. 

Colt supposed that when destabilizing a previous government, it might make sense to strip away the foundation they had ruled from before. If nothing else, the people who despised the old government would appreciate the symbolic gesture.

"So," Sarah spoke, "I think my folks will get along fine. In a couple of days,” she furrowed her brows, looking between them all—"I imagine they'll have everything under wraps and I'll be able to go. So for me, a couple of days.”

Colt clapped his hands and then looked at the last member of their group, Nick. The man simply nodded, not saying anything, still sulky and quiet, alone in his corner. But that was fine. He was along for the job only, and they all knew he had no business to wrap up within the city.

Nate and Julia were watching over him, so he hadn't been trusted to be involved in any of the more vital aspects of managing New Nashville. It wouldn't do to have someone who had been so tied to Denny before work on restructuring the city. With Sarah's proclamation and the date marked, they knew what they were getting into.

"Let's call it three days from now," Colt said, looking between them all. "Three days from now, and we will go to this dungeon. We will go inside the dungeon. And we will deal with this threat once and for all. Are we in agreement?"

A resounding chorus of "yes" followed. As everyone fell in line, they understood the gravity of the situation. Nate's warning that this was a risk and that they should have their affairs in order cleared up any misunderstandings.

People began to filter out. Nick looked like he wanted to go, so Nate took him first, leading him to their apartment. Sarah gave them all a quick smile and then a glare at Nate's back as she too left, no doubt to follow through on what she said, coordinate construction efforts, and inform them that she might be gone for an indefinite, maybe permanent amount of time if things went wrong.

That left Julia, who leaned back in her chair and looked out the big window that had formerly been Denny's stellar view of the city of New Nashville.

"You know, when I always pictured the world ending, I thought I'd be dead right away," Julia said, laughing to herself. "With everything going to shit, I just didn't have the survival skills, Everyone makes a plan for when the zombies come, and my plan was to try not to get eaten too badly."

"Yet you're here," Colt confirmed. "You're among us, the strongest in the city, about to confront a threat that will save countless others. It seems your plan to just die in the apocalypse didn't get very far."

She snorted and shook her head. "It certainly wasn't for lack of trying with the way I was acting in those first couple of dungeons with you guys. I'm surprised you put up with me for as long as you did. But hey, maybe it’s about to happen now.”

Colt sighed. "It's hard to be angry with someone when they're under stress like this. Different people react to hard situations in different ways. Nothing you did was out of maliciousness. You were under a delusion. We just wanted to help you. Because at the core, I knew you were a fine person."

Colt moved over and looked out the window. The city had grown. With new refugees, re-spacing, and different zoning laws, people now had room to build their own buildings, businesses, and more spacious houses. Eventually, when this threat was over, people could move outside the stadium into the surrounding lands and buildings.

When that happened, Colt knew the ability for the city to grow and truly thrive would only increase. There would be different smaller settlements from the groups now hunkering down. And he figured the people who had fought with them against Denny might then split. Although most, he thought, after having lived like this, had been welcomed, seen the changes being made, and had the chance to add their voices to how this place was run, might find it hard to leave now.

For a long moment, he and Julia relaxed in the light of the day, knowing that in three days' time, they would be facing the biggest threat they had faced yet. It was a moment of calm, peace, and cold as he watched the city move beneath his gaze.

He went into this dungeon not only to help these people but in a quest to refine himself, to progress further than he had been before. However, these people were nice. The spirit of Nashville was a familiar home to him, though he was an outsider here. Julia was too—just as much of an outsider as he was, both of them still finding their place in this transformed world.