A mad dash from Freegate ensued with Cadmos in front and the rest behind, except for a few officers who had retained their +20 INT glasses from Always Leveling Titan despite the tut-tutting of fashion. Those rare birds, including a Rare, no birds though, clung to the leader and got a free ride in the instinctual manner of secondary characters in all works of fiction. Let go for even a second and the writers might forget you. “Wasn't there some officer from Tremdrado we could use for this event? Begins with a U? Oh well, let's just throw in Lua again.” A tragic fate.

“Think of those living ghosts when you complain, Cadmos.”

“I wasn't complaining, Ulrik.”

“To carry us is an idyllic situation compared to that. You should thank us.”

“I'm not going to thank you, Ulrik. By the way, if you insist on staying on my back, climb a little higher and give Uamna some room.”

“I will. Watch out for my knee in your liver. I can get up without doing that because of my athleticism, but I refuse.”

“I'm glad you warned me, Ulrik. That gives me time to AAARRGHH!”

Uamna peeked over his shoulder. “Sign ahead.”

“Thank you, Uamna. I did already see it, but it's good to know we're on the same page.”

“Mhm. Nixa N. Dorenz, Azinsia, and Otsk V. Zops can't.”

Cadmos tried to turn around but gave up when he stumbled. “How many of you are back there?”

Ulrik dug one elbow deep in the main character's red hair in a thoughtful pose. “Frankly, I don't think you can count that high without these glasses. Since you geared exclusively for Attack.”

“I have other stats, Ulrik. My Defense and Critical Effect are both above average. If anything, my Attack is a little low.”

“Impossible. You wouldn't be able to carry all of us then.”

“I suppose I can't argue.”

He must have had good Speed to keep ahead of the host, too, except for the fact that the Speed stat affected attack speed and not movement speed in CoH, and also that his Speed most certainly was not all that good. He was a Champion and not a Harasser, after all.

He saw the first sign straight ahead from Freegate's primary gate. Unlike the painted markers the Construction crews employed to render Opuwa navigable, that developer-inserted landmark featured an array of light bulbs that could be activated to point left, right, up, or even down. As soon as the officers saw it, the Strategists began arguing which of those last two must see less use.

“Any kind of project needs to be marked, and especially roads, because otherwise people will dig holes there to look for treasure or walk off with surveying equipment and not even know they're doing anything wrong. Or that's what they'll tell the judge anyway. And if you get Rylweadh you're doomed, but if it's Rylweadh of Mercy you might get away with it,” Ipons Ulsrada said.

Mentor Tendradius Pux took the same side based on alternative reasoning. “Another ploy is to mark purported treasure. The seekers dig. An ambush is a simple thing at that point.”

“Those points are all ones I must concede,” Gintus Pelluina conceded. “Is any Strategist disagreeable enough to contend otherwise? However, one factor may have been overlooked in those analyses. I speak of course of the technological. Transportation is no longer restricted to the ground alone, not since the Montgolfier triumph, to say nothing of another pair of brothers, the Wrights, or later innovators. Mandate that Hot Air Hank provide a notice such as this whenever he wishes to loft his ever-improving balloons, and you will find an up arrow always in operation somewhere in world. Have we even considered the pigeon routes? Our hunters ought to be told where they may hunt birds and where they may not.”

“Sure, but we can fix that by telling them not to shoot pigeons anywhere,” Ipons Ulsrada said. “What? Why are you looking at me like that? Sindze? Otsk V. Zops? It's a helpful idea!”

“What better reason for our hunters to oppose it from the beginning, before it wins adherents?” On that point at least, all the Strategists agreed with Gintus Pelluina, even if some were too busy avoiding collisions with other running officers to say so.

Non-Strategist Cadmos focused on practical matters. He turned left as the sign told him, then right as the next indicated, and left again. The one pointing up, to Ipons Ulsrada's satisfaction, caused some trouble on account of his faulty presumption that it was telling him to go straight.

“Hrng, urg, one more, ah, got it!” The followers clapped when Cadmos finally hauled himself out of the tiger trap, a dozen officers dangling off him along with a tiger imported from Paradise the Enchant.

“So that's where my tiger went.” Heartful Azalea pried her misplaced order off Cadmos while he shook off a pit's worth of dirt. “And my tiger trap. Oh, maybe I should have predicted this result. Next time!”

The crazed dash toward the mysterious data renewal facility resumed. What might the penalty be if Cadmos failed to appear for his appointment? Would he be busted back down to Super Rare? Have his Eclipse element revoked? A few troublemakers tried to trip him, eager to find out, but the rest had more interest in spinoffs and data renewal facilities than the scientific method. “We don't have a control group anyway,” Tiboleus the Experimenter pointed out, whose name was his business, but not particularly his pleasure during off-hours.

Away from Freegate and out of Perandra Regna entirely, along the coast of the Greater Gulf, past the storehouses and Ulrik's pre-Halloween tower of fun gimmicks, through East Beruvia, and finally into a southern land the writers had not yet bothered to name the officers ran. The journey was long, difficult, and full of tiger traps Azalea had forgotten, but the last leg offered relief. Not only did the writers' pens never wander beyond Beruvia, but neither did any effort of the art department aside from a click of the fill tool.

Endless, heightless green bereft of a single hill, tower, or pit with a tiger in it tasked the eye by its sprawling monotony. A flashing arrow under a sign reading Data Renewal Center provided a break, just like the ones players always wanted between events and story releases. “Save me from all those creative bosses and easy rewards,” they said. “I want to blow all my Supply to end up with two Warpshaped Chunks.” Next they always said something something pride, something something accomplishment, that whole thing.

Miles later, just as crying began among officers when they lost interest in the great plain and remembered the bridal results, Cadmos reached the starting line of an unfathomable new marathon. A long, two-story rectangular blue building had been plopped there by a developer with no concern for developing a harmonious relationship between new and existing elements in an architectural sense. The most ostentatious palaces in Perandra Splendida let light in through a window here and there, each one framed in an ornate manner intended to draw attention away from the bare wall, but that modern installation before them had rows of plain windows all around it and not much else. A door, certainly, and above that an LCD display.

“'Currently capturing: CADMOS,'” Uamna read. “It's waiting for you, Cadmos. Why did you stop?”

“I think I'm supposed to go in alone, Uamna.”

The pack caught up. Gintus Pelluina slowed, trotted a few steps, and stopped next to the burdened main character. “Thinking is better done when you might not already be late. Benefiting from that state myself, I thought a bit and concluded it is unlikely the building will permit them entrance. Run, hero! Run and let your hangers-on have their deserts!”

“If that's your advice, Gintus.” Cadmos sprang toward the sliding glass door, which opened at his approach. His cargo whooped, hollered, and smacked into an invisible wall through which the lone invited officer passed without issue.

“What's the point of the door then!” they moaned as they tumbled to the ground.

“To make us laugh,” the others answered. Probably untrue, but it felt right in the moment. Gintus Pelluina refrained from laughing, but only so he could smirk harder.