Inflame (The Completionist Chronicles Book 6), Dakota Krout [free novels to read TXT] 📗

Joe winced the word ‘audit’, but waited patiently for an answer. Five minutes passed, ten, but nothing changed. He took a few hesitant steps, expecting that he would be whisked away as soon as he started moving. Still, nothing. Trying to put it out of his mind, he started running, feeling slow for some reason. “Right… lost my shoes.”

He burst into the city, running past a confused guard, who had expected him to be gone for several days, before he ran into his first real issue. “Where is the entrance to the landfill? I came out of it… I think it was… no, I died in there. Never got out by walking.”

He knew another way to get into the sewers, but there was only one way to do it fast. This time, however, he wasn’t going to be jumping into the outskirts of the pile. No, he was going right for the expensive stuff. That meant that there would be a hard landing and monsters to contend with. That was fine. This time, he knew what he was getting into, and he had an oversized mana pool so that he could be his own backup. “Already have food packed, and I don’t need water. Let’s go.”

With that, he raced toward the only high-end shop in the city that he knew would let him use their garbage chute: McPoundy’s forge. Joe ran in, barely sparing a glance for the many exasperated stares he started to collect as soon as the door opened. “Pardon me; where do you all dump failures? Your access point into the landfill?”

“Center of the room,” one of the Journeymen stated, getting ‘cheerful’ grins from his contemporaries. “What? What’s he gonna do with that information? Get more training and cheat into a higher rank?”

Joe saw an opportunity and decided to run with it. “Hey, listen up, everyone. I know you don’t really like the fact that I’ve been able to get special treatment. Let me make it up to you.”

“I’ll leave here like all other failures.” He walked over to the chute and threw it open, getting a few laughs as he reeled back from the sudden wash of foulness that wafted out. He waved at them, double-checked his buffs, and jumped in headfirst. “Goodbye, cruel forge!”

The shouts of alarm that followed him in were more than enough to make up for the awkward entry.

“He’s lost it!”

“Throw a rope in! That nutter bro is gonna get us all banned from the forge!”

“Stop him! McPoundy’s gonna eat us for lunch if Candidate bro’s death is traced back here!”

Joe chuckled the whole way down the slimy tube, his breath catching as he entered the open air above the landfill. The sight was magnificent, since he was approaching from far above and much nearer the center of the hollow mountain. “Oh, right; that’s why Havoc dropped me at the edge. To get a soft landing.”

The human was dropping directly toward a massive hillock of weapons and metals that had been deemed ‘not good enough to distribute’. He twisted and got his feet under him, landing almost gently among the stalagmites of slag and shambles of rusting steel.

Exquisite Shell: 8,657/9,260

“Six hundred and three damage?” Joe looked at the treasure trove that he had literally fallen into, then back at the small dent in his protections. “Totally worth it.”

A rope slapped into the side of his head, startling him. He looked up just in time to see it get cut in half as the protective shielding of the landfill recognized it as something attempting to ‘climb up and out’. “Well, feces. Good thing I wanted to be here… nice of them to try, at least. First thing; set a perimeter.”

He hadn’t forgotten that the entire place was infested by zombie Dwarves stumbling around, and Joe didn’t want to stay focused all the way up to getting munched on. Luckily, he had something perfectly suited for this sort of situation. “Quarantine area should almost guarantee me some peace and quiet.”

Since the ritual was so simple and easy to set up, in less than twenty minutes, he was able to activate the two circles.

Class experience gained: 50 (Reductionist).

The soft sound of materials rotting was covered by a sudden rush of clawed feet skittering away from him, and Joe shuddered as he realized that he was hearing literally thousands of small things moving. Rodents? Perhaps, but what level did they need to be to survive in an area like this? “Well… at least I know they are all under level twenty-nine, or they’d be all over me right now.”

“Oh… I’m at only fourteen experience from the first level as a Reductionist.” Joe looked around, then at his status screen, then around again. “Alright. It can only help me to have a higher class level, right?”

He found a tower shield that was almost perfectly flat, and decided to use it as a base for an Apprentice-ranked Ritual of Acid Spray. That would let him get the level up in an instant, wouldn’t take too long or cost too much, and would still be useful in getting through the muck that filled the area. Barring usefulness for unearthing high aspect-rarity goods, he could always toss it in a space beneath residential areas and use it to clear food and trash waste.

Ten minutes for the first circle, fifteen for the next, and twenty-five for the third. Almost an hour used, but hopefully not wasted. Joe lugged the shield to the edge of the area defined by the Quarantine Area, then swung it around in a wide arc, releasing it like a discus just after activating it. The shield flew like a frisbee, its weight ensuring that it was going slow enough not to activate the boundary shields.

A rain of acid fell from it as it travelled, but Joe wasn’t following it. He was staring gleefully at the message waiting for him. A shock of silvery energy pulsed through him, not as