Backwoods Dungeon

Chapter Eighteen

Boyerton

I lost access to the waypoint while I slept. I wasn’t very surprised. The vines I’d placed over it were conspicuous, so it was only a matter of time before the goblins found it and took it back.

Losing the teleportation ability felt like a physical blow. There was something insanely cool about being able to teleport to another place, and I wondered what other people would see if I teleported in front of them. I supposed now I’d never know.

Curiosity would not kill this cat.

I’d committed. I couldn’t be off dungeon diving when I had perfectly reasonable sources of money right in town. Sure, a regular job might be boring, but I’d never been stabbed in the lung working as a W2 employee either.

I’d been cooped up at home for far too long, though. I hadn’t thought much about my friends since this whole business with the cave began, and I realized I was neglecting them. Well. Him.

I didn’t have many friends in general. I’d had a close-knit group in high school, and one by one, I’d lost touch with them. Drifted apart, distance, or in one particular case, a huge blowout where I finally called the bastard out on being a thief.

I’d gotten a new car radio for my birthday one year but hadn’t installed it for various reasons. When I finally did want to use it, I’d found it conspicuously missing. Meanwhile my ‘buddy’ was bragging about his new car radio that he went out and bought with all the money he earned from the job he didn’t have.

That wasn’t the first time, but it was a last straw. Before this, there had been Nerf guns, video games, tool sets from my parent’s garage… The irritating part was that we probably would’ve given him anything he'd taken if he’d just asked for it.

I broke contact with him. I couldn’t technically prove that he’d done it, but… well. He’d done it.

I decided I’d made the right decision when he wound up in jail a few years later, but unfortunately, that meant that by my ripe old age of thirty-two, I was pretty much down to just two friends, and only Dane lived nearby.

“You busy? Get some KFC with me!” I texted him with the voice commands from my truck as I drove.

I didn’t really have all that much to do in town, so I hoped he wasn’t working an off-shift. It was nearly noon, but since I wasn’t working in the middle of the day on a Wednesday. To my wife, that translated to, “Hey, my hubby can do ‘in-town’ things like changing the truck’s oil and grocery shopping!”

Irritatingly, she was one hundred percent right about that, so I had to go into town anyway.

A mile or two down the road, I got a text back. “Monroe’s instead? Twenty min?”

I winced. Despite the incredibly non-Italian name, Monroe’s was an Italian place, and it was a bit pricey. I figured I could afford it since it had lower prices for lunch, though. Being broke was a problem for future me. I was still flush with blood money.

“Sounds good,” I replied and continued driving. I’d known from the start Dane wouldn’t eat at KFC. He didn’t like the chicken, but there were quite a few places I thought he’d choose before Monroe’s.

Boyerton was a tiny town in the ass-end of nowhere, nestled in a mountain valley. It sounded picturesque, and the countryside certainly could be, but the town itself was kind of dingy. It had a broken-down gym, a dance studio, a couple of restaurants, four or five fast food joints, and a Walmart that had managed to weasel its way in despite a population hell-bent on keeping their mom-and-pop stores till the end of time.

Roads that needed repair and driveways that might as well be cliffs were the norm, though a surprising amount of work had been put into the county roads surrounding it.

I pulled into Monroe’s parking lot about fifteen minutes later, my throat raw from trying to sing emo songs with high notes I hadn’t been able to hit since I was twelve. I loved them anyway, though.

Dane was already there, leaning against his Honda Piece-Uh-Shit. It had been a nice car once, but he’d banged it up in multiple wrecks throughout high school. He was a car-junkie type who could fix just about anything that broke himself and had proven it by keeping the ancient car running despite its 300,000-plus mileage.

It did look like trash though, thus the name.

“Hey bud, long time no see! What’s been happening?” he exclaimed as I pulled in.

He was too upbeat. He knew.

I rolled my eyes at him, and he winced.

“Too much?”

“Did Rio tell you?” I asked.

“Nah. Cambria,” he said.

“Which means Rio told her. Those traitors!”

He chuckled and slapped me on the back. “Sorry, man. No secrets between girls, you know? And you'll bounce back. You're better than that job, anyway. At least you don’t seem too bent out of shape about it. ”

I pondered that for a moment before shrugging. He was right. After being stabbed, cut, and nearly killed, losing my job no longer seemed to matter as much.

Plus, he wasn’t exactly right. No one knew about my doctor’s test results. Rio would never gossip about that.

“I guess not. Found something kinda new already, in fact. It’s why I’m not all that worried about friggin Monroe’s,” I said, gesturing at the restaurant. “Wait a minute, you suggested this place when you knew I just got fired? Cold man. Cold!”

“Well. I was gonna pay, but since you’ve already got something new, I guess you don’t–!”

“Dane, ole’ buddy, ole’ pal! Have I ever told you how good it is, having you as a friend?” I interrupted, plastering a big fake grin across my face.

He snickered but ignored my joke. “Actually, have you looked at KFC’s prices lately? Get water and a lunch deal here, and it’s cheaper than any of the fast food numbers around. Trust me, I’ve checked.”

Dane was Hispanic and as skinny as I was fat. He was a bit shorter than me with curly black hair and spoke with a mild accent. English was technically his second language, but he’d grown up with both. We’d met during my brief stint at Dowells, and the friendship had persisted after I left. We both had a mutual appreciation for all things Final Fantasy, and plenty of other nerdy fandoms, which I still found strange for a person who also enjoyed working on cars.

“You’re probably right,” I agreed. “Appreciate the offer, too, but you don’t have to pay. I did find something that looked like it would be good at first, but it’s getting... less lucrative.”

“Nah, fuck it, man. I can get this,” he said.

I was actually a little touched. “Thanks, man.”

He shrugged. “Eh, you’ll give it right back at the poker game tomorrow anyway.”

I chuckled as we went in.

“So, what’s this new thing you found?” he asked after we were seated and ordered.

“Coding, kind of. Small functions by request. You ever heard of Fiverr? It’s not that, but similar,” I lied.

I thought Dane might be harder to fool than Rio had been, but he accepted that. He liked games but wasn’t a coder like me. Who was he to disagree if the programmer said he was making money by programming?

A small part of me wanted to gush. I could do magic. Even now, sitting here in the real world, I could still feel my reservoir of mana. My healing aura was active, and I was fully aware of the people around me. To my delight, there were no mice or rats anywhere in my vicinity. Not that many bugs, either.

Impressive, Monroe’s.

I hadn’t revealed my new class to Rio, though. If anyone ever found out about it, she would be the first.

I could imagine a time just a few years ago when I would’ve been screaming from the rooftops, “I can make Tornados!” After all, who didn’t dream of creating a Kamehame Ha, or a Rasengan as a kid?

Life had taught me to be more cautious. I’d had three chances to pick it, and I still hadn’t chosen an attack skill like Tornado. It just wasn’t very valuable. In fact, it might be straight-up dangerous. “It was cool” probably wouldn’t make a very good legal defense if my tornado tore down a building.

If goblins started spilling out of my woods in droves, that might change, but vines and traps were fine with me for now.

“So like, I hope the coding thing works out, but there’s always a spot for you at Dowells if you need it,” he said.

“Trouble keeping people?” I asked.

“Maybe? Just got this real good kid, Todd, set to graduate come May. He’s going to Arkansas State after the summer. He’s been a stand-up worker, three weeks straight. Out of the blue last night, no-call no-show. So I’m calling him, calling him. Nothing. I have to work half his shift before I finally get Pat to come in.”

“That sucks,” I said with genuine concern.

“Gets weirder. This morning, his mom calls the store, wondering if I’d seen him after he got off work last night!”

“Shit. Hope he’s okay. But hey, he’s a high schooler. Probably just went partying or something. He’ll turn up.”

He sighed worriedly as he took a sip of freshly delivered water.

“I was mad last night, but now I’m actually worried about him. Like. Maybe I should’ve tried harder to figure out why he didn’t show, you know?” he said.

“Heh. You’re letting that manager title stretch a little too far. You aren’t his Mom. He’ll show, and if he doesn’t, cut him loose,” I replied with a laugh.

“I guess,” he said, rubbing his head tiredly.

He abruptly changed the subject as if realizing he’d brought down the mood of an already awkward conversation. “Well, anyway. What else is new with you? Played anything good lately?”

“Nah. Been using the time off to wrack up Brownie points with Rio. I actually think I’m finally gonna get around to building that range I was–!”

I was cut off as the gong sounded in my head.

I’d just leveled up.