Chapter 3

The building they approached was two stories high and elongated, made entirely out of grey fused stone with empty openings without glass for windows. From the outside it looked like a very bare and basic concrete building, something you might find in an abandoned and dilapidated industrial park.

When the team entered, it didn’t look a whole lot better inside, it seemed all the furniture was made out of moulded stone by an earth cultivator. However, a lot of the stone furniture, beds and chairs and the like were covered in thick animal and monster pelts, the kinds of luxurious fur pelts Jack had seen being sold for upwards of twenty thousand pounds in the outside world. In fact one hunter was lounging on a lovely looking thick fluffy white pelt with his dirty boots on it while he laid back and listened to his earphones.

The team looked around for someone who looked like they were in charge. Eventually Noah flagged down a passing hunter who pointed them down the corridor to what was apparently Sarah’s office, the woman whom the commander had told them to speak to.

When they reached the office, Meredith ducked her head in and came back out again, she turned back with a shrug and a shake of her head as Sarah wasn’t in her office. However a dry croaky voice sounded from behind the group, hidden behind Noah’s bulk, a short lady emerged.

“Looking for me?” she croaked and everyone jumped. She stood looking up at them expectantly, she was short, barely five feet, looking to be in her forties with short brown hair. She wore a relaxed set of casual clothes with no armour present along with some flip flops. All signs indicated that she was just a civilian and not a hunter or cultivator, however the grey streaks of petrified flesh covering much of her throat indicated otherwise.

“Well?” she asked, tapping her foot impatiently when no one answered immediately.

“Er hi, we’re a new team, just arrived here,” Meredith started and smiled, the short woman simply looked at her impassively. “Erm, the outpost commander said we should talk to you about accommodation? You are Sarah right?”

“Ah! The newbies, yes. James said you’d be coming by today or tomorrow.” A gleam of recognition entered her eyes as she clicked her fingers. “Right, follow me, I’ve got a room for your team. After that I’ll give you an orientation tour so you can get your bearings, not that you’ll be staying here for long if the commander’s little plan works out.” Sarah turned around and walked quickly down the corridor they’d walked down, everyone hurried to follow her, for a short woman she certainly walked fast.

Sarah led them through several corridors, all of which had large rooms with signs of occupancy, until they arrived at their assigned room. It was a large circular room which had five stone slabs in the shapes of beds arranged in a circle and several unlit electric lanterns on the floor in the centre. That was it, a stone circular room and five rocks to sleep on.

“Well shit,” Nate commented as he looked over everyone’s shoulders into the room. Nobody else said anything but they shared the sentiment.

“Well what did you expect? The Ritz? Although we do have a natural hot spring in the back. But anyway, we had to abandon our last site pretty quickly and we couldn’t save all our equipment, so we’re having to make do with what we can harvest, hunt and create ourselves. Feel free to take what you can carry from any of your hunts in the Woods, most hunters bring back pelts. However, now this is a strict rule, everything you bring back has to go through quarantine,” she warned them seriously.

“Quarantine?” Katie asked.

“Mm, this is still an….alien environment, the things we hunt and harvest may carry all sorts of nastiness in them that we don’t know about; poisons, toxins, pathogens and parasites. The quarantine rule got put into place when someone brought back a fur pelt that was infested with some sort of super lice, after just one night that particular hunter and his whole team were nearly bitten to death in their sleep and suffered severe blood loss. And that's not an exaggeration either, we actually had to give them blood transfusions,” she explained grimly.

Everyone winced and cringed.

“Yes, we also had to get rid of all the non-stone furniture in the barracks and then we flamed everything because the damn things had spread everywhere. People were not pleased,” she added with a shake of her head. “Anyway, this is your room, feel free to furnish it with anything that comes out of quarantine and if you’ve got an earth cultivator with you then they can make whatever changes they like, just as long as it doesn’t mess with the structural integrity of the building. Now follow me, I’ll show you where the bathroom facilities are on the way out and then the rest of the base.” She turned around and led them away from their oh so inviting accommodations at a brisk pace.

She took them all over the large cavern, she showed them the clinic for treatment of injuries, the armoury for equipment repairs and forging, the marquee tent where the canteen was located and a large network of tents and earthen shelters where a lot of research on different materials was performed. That apparently also connected to the quarantine area where hunters and materials had to stop by after they’d been out in the Dire Woods.

Apparently Darren had neglected to bring them by the place, when Nate innocently mentioned that within earshot of a lab coat wearing technician they were all immediately ushered into a small tent. After a few minutes someone else wearing a lab coat walked in, he had each of them strip in small modules with screens for privacy, and sprays of some sort of disinfectant from the smell of it then came out of pipes from above.

After a few minutes of that, they were allowed to leave the quarantine tent where they found their gear in neat piles on benches, which had also been examined and screened for anything nasty. Everyone dragged their gear back on and exited the quarantine area.

They met Sarah outside and as they continued the tour, they passed a sheepish looking Darren who walked over to the quarantine tent. Just before they lost sight of him they saw Darren talking to a man wearing a lab coat, they didn’t hear what was said but the lab coat wearing man suddenly slapped Darren on the back of the head and shoved him into the quarantine tent.

The last stop on the orientation tour was the notice board, located in the middle of the cavern near the command tent, this was where all jobs and hunts were posted. It was about the size of a classroom whiteboard, it was a little bare, with only a few pieces of torn paper pinned on the wooden board and all the jobs written in pencil. Apparently the outpost had put a halt on most jobs coming in from the outside until the original outpost site was reclaimed. The vast majority of jobs for hunters were assigned directly by the commander himself in preparation for the big operation.

Just before she made to leave, Sarah gave them directions to the hot springs which were near the barracks. However, Jack caught her just before she turned to go.

“Um hey, I have a question,” he said.

“Oh? Go on then,” she said a little impatiently.

“The commander said that people might be a little weird about my ability to attune entire monster corpses, what did he mean by that? He said to ask you.” At that the rest of the group looked at the small woman with interest.

“Attune entire? - Oh! You must be the lightning cultivator! Right, yes. Hmm, he’s right about that, people are gonna be somewhat strange about that, hmm…” She paused and seemed to be deep in thought.

“Okay but why would people be weird? It's a useful ability, no?” Katie spoke up.

“Oh it's useful, no doubt about that,” Sarah agreed.

“Then what is people's problem with it? That hardly the weirdest or creepiest thing about Jack,” Nate put in.

“Hey!”

“The problem….is…complicated. It's the….implications I suppose, that's the best word I can think of right now,” she said awkwardly.

“The…implications? What implications?” Jack asked in confusion. This wasn’t making any sense.

“You see, we found out something that has the researchers and upper echelons of the guild in a bit of a tizzy, along with nearly everybody else here too. I’m told this particular piece of information hasn’t been shared with the public nor any other guild hunter beyond those already here,” she explained.

“What? What is it?”

“Well, just like monsters in the outside world, anything that dies in the Dire Woods will fade into multicoloured light and vapour. Anything, that includes humans as well,” she stated.

Everyone looked at her shock for a long moment, just trying to get their heads around that.

“Fade? Just - Just like a monster?” Katie choked out after a while. Sarah simply nodded solemnly.

“But how? We’re not monsters, this isn’t a dungeon is it?” Meredith said.

“I don’t know, and no we don’t think this is a dungeon, in a dungeon everything fades but in the Woods it's just living or formerly living matter, your weapons, clothes and armour remain behind.” Sarah then shrugged. “All I know is that it happens everytime, that's why we never get to transport dead hunters' remains out of the Woods, sometimes they get eaten, other times they just fade. Although I don’t know how things even get eaten if they just fade away when they die, that's a whole other mystery we’re looking into. Anyway if you want to discuss any theories or hypotheses, the researchers are always willing to talk your ear off.” She waved her hand over in the direction of the quarantine tents they’d just come from.

“Hmm, I think I may understand why the other hunters and base personnel might be somewhat…….wary of Jack’s abilities,” Noah rumbled. “If he can attune dead monsters and stop them from fading, then in theory he can do the same with human corpses also. Correct?” He looked to Sarah who nodded in confirmation.

“Then,” he continued. “Am I also correct in assuming that some of the people here don’t know if they should let Jack….attune them or not?” he asked.

Sarah sighed. “Aye, that's about the gist of it. The revelation and the implications of us fading away just like monsters is crazy enough, no one knows whether it's natural or not, whether or not it's supposed to happen. No one knows what to make of it at all really. But at least until the lightning cultivator here arrived, no one had a choice in the matter, but now? Well, do people let themselves fade away when they die or do they ask him to stop that? What does either action mean?” Sarah shook her head tiredly.

“I don’t get it,” Nate spoke up. “What do you mean; what does it mean? So you fade away if you die, so what? You’re dead, why care?” he said blithely with a shrug.

“It means, umm…..” Katie started but then struggled to add anything else. Noah frowned and looked into the distance, deep in thought. Jack didn’t know what to say either. Meredith then spoke up.

“It means, what happens to you after you die in this place? Your immortal soul or whatever, an afterlife. Do we want to avoid dying here at all costs? Do we want Jack to attune our corpses to avoid us fading away like slain monsters or is that actually a bad thing? Interfering with a benevolent natural process. We don’t know, we have no way of knowing. It's that sort of uncertainty that can get to people I suppose,” Meredith calmly explained, and Nate nodded in understanding.

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“Oh okay, I think I get it. Hmm, that is a tricky one. Yeah, personally I want to go to Valhalla when I die and I don’t really want anything interfering with that. I think I’ll just not die while I’m here, or if I do then it’ll be with my sword in my hand,” he said resolutely. Katie stifled a smile from behind him.

Sarah looked at them with a bored expression. “Well kids, if you’re all done having an existential crisis, I’d advise you to get something to eat and then get some sleep. You can take your first job tomorrow, you’ll also be assigned a surveyor guide for your first few expeditions. And next to the jobs notice board there’s a map of the known parts of the Dire Woods, it's got the hotspot locations of various monsters and beasts on it so you can use that to start off your hunts.” She pointed to a large map next to the notice board. “Most of the jobs here are for hunting and harvesting stuff that's easily and quickly transportable back through the Dire Woods entrance, they’re the bare minimum needed to keep up with our monthly quota.” Everyone crowded around the map and studied it with interest. Jack took out his pager and took a picture of the whole thing, making sure the image was still in focus when he zoomed in on the captured picture. Everyone quickly copied him.

“What do you think Meredith? What job should we take first?” Katie asked.

“Oh, ermmm…I dunno, there’s a nest of Charred ants over here, they’ve got valuable harvestables or er….” She examined the map closely, not certain what to do.

“How about this one?” Noah confidently stepped forward. “It's for a harvesting job of Echo Lilies, the job has a reasonable price tag and on the way back we can divert slightly to go through here.” He pointed to a spot on the map which had a small beast face icon. Everyone looked to the side of the map where the map legend was, they quickly looked down the list until they spotted what the icon was.

“Spined Ursa? Spikey bears? Is there a job for them too?” Meredith asked.

“No, but I was thinking we could hunt them on the side for their pelts. I don’t know about the rest of you but I don't want to sleep on hard rock for more than one night,” he explained.

“Ooh! That's a good idea,” Katie excitedly said.

“Hell yeah! Let's kill something then sleep in its skin!” Nate echoed Katie’s sentiment in his own way.

Jack looked at Meredith who seemed uncomfortable for some reason.

“Um yeah, okay then. Let's do that shall we?” She gave a small smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes before looking at Jack.

“Yeah, sounds good.” He shrugged, noticing Meredith’s vague discomfort and resolved to speak to her about that.

With that decided, they decided to head off to the canteen.

After a surprisingly decent meal composed of various ingredients that had been harvested and hunted in the Woods, everyone separated to explore the temporary outpost by themselves leaving Jack and Meredith at the table. It was getting late and the canteen had begun to empty, however all throughout their meal and currently, people had been glancing and staring at Jack. They were the sorts of stares he’d begun to recognise recently, they were the looks of people who didn’t know what to make of him. To be honest, he was okay with that, as far as he was concerned that was a step up from the usual looks of pity and contempt he’d become accustomed to before his outing as a successful lightning cultivator.

Meredith still seemed a little down for some reason, she was nursing her mug of moonshine and staring into it with a sigh, Jack decided to ask her what was up.

“You okay Meredith?” he asked.

“Oh? Um, yeah. I’m good, why?” she attempted to smile at him but again the smile seemed sad and didn’t quite reach her eyes.

He shrugged. “Earlier, when we were choosing a job, you looked uncomfortable, you still look uncomfortable. So what's up? You can tell me,” he reassured her.

“Well…it's just….am I…am I a good leader? Oh god! I’m terrible aren’t I?” she blurted out.

“Huh?”

“Well…ever since we became a team, I haven’t really been leading much. It always seems to be Noah stepping up and telling everyone what to do because I hesitate and dither around, urgh.” She buried her face in her hands and rubbed her face in frustration.

Jack considered how to approach this, never having been much of a social person, his skills in reassuring and giving others encouragement and advice were limited.

“Well, have you ever been part of a team before?” he asked, stalling, still trying to think of something useful to say.

“No…well, I did sometimes team up with others back in London but I never wanted to stay,” she answered sadly.

“Okay, so you’re inexperienced with the whole team thing, just like me really. Hmm…” he continued thinking.

“Do you think I should just let Noah be team leader?” she asked him worriedly.

“No! God No!” Jack blurted out in panic straightaway. “Noah as team leader!? Please no!”

Meredith giggled. “You don’t like him huh?”

“It's not….I don’t dislike him. But the guy’s way too stiff necked and…..organised, if he ran things he’d be having us all get up at four in the morning everyday for drills and exercise, planning every little thing we did. Do you remember when he tried to give you that schedule for everyone to follow? And you told him no? Best decision you ever made. And when he tried to tell Nate to stop drinking so much after that hunt for the mutated wild hare’s? No, Noah isn’t leader material,” Jack stressed emphatically, shaking his head. “I can actually sort of see why him trying to become team leader in his last team may have upset people. He’s a good hunter but a team leader? Uh uh.”

“I guess you’re right, but what about me? What should I do? How can I be a better team leader?” she asked worriedly.

“Well….how about this. When we next get into a situation where we need you to, you know, lead, instead of waiting for Noah to butt in, I’ll ask you what you want to do. That way he has to defer to you, he can’t just take charge like he normally does. How about that?” he suggested.

“Oh I like that! Yes, let's do that! You ask me and I’ll be like ‘everyone charge!’ or ‘take them in the flanks!’ or something like that. Yes!” she smiled brightly, suddenly happy. “Thanks Jack!”

“You're welcome. Anyway, shall we go back to our room now and force Noah to mould our beds into something extravagant and ostentatious? I was thinking about making mine a king sized four poster bed with filigree and elaborate carvings in the shape of different animals and monsters.” He grinned at her. She giggled again.

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The next day, everyone gathered by the notice board again after a brief breakfast. In the Dire Woods outpost, the way to book a job for yourself and your team was to take the piece of paper with the job you wanted on it from the board and hand it in to what passed for a help desk in a small tent nearby to the left.

Once they’d done that they were free to go out into the Dire Woods. However they were still waiting for their assigned surveyor guide whom they’d been told was to meet them by the notice board in the morning.

“Hey!” The group turned around from watching Nate trying to balance the tip of his giant sword on his chin and saw a woman approach them. She had dark skin and black hair, she looked to be in her mid to late thirties and wore a long poncho that rippled strangely with different dull colours. She also had a mug of what appeared to be steaming hot coffee, she took a sip from it as she leisurely strolled towards them.

“You lot team Meredith?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Meredith answered her.

“Good, I’m Sam, your assigned surveyor guide for your first few trips into the Woods,” she introduced herself before taking another sip of coffee.

“Oh, it's nice to meet you ma’am,” Meredith politely introduced herself before introducing the rest of the team. The surveyor took it all in with a faintly bored, jaded expression, though her eyes did linger on Jack for a moment.

“Great, now we’re all friends. You got a job picked out yet?” she asked brusquely. Jack was beginning to agree with the general assessment that surveyors were a breed apart.

“Um, yes. We thought we’d do the job for harvesting Echo Lilies,” Meredith told her.

“Taking a walk through the forest and picking some flowers eh?” Sam gave a lopsided grin.

“Errr….”

“Ah relax, I’m just messin’ with ya. Any of you know what Echo Lilies are?” Sam asked the group, taking another sip of coffee.

“Um..” Katie nervously raised her hand.

“Yeah you with the raised hand.” Sam pointed to Katie.

“Um…they lure in their prey using perfectly replicated sounds, any animal and monster sounds, even human voices and um…manmade devices. They can replicate it all and reproduce it,” Katie explained.

“Hm good, but you forgot something.”

“What's that?”

“The Lilies don’t kill their own prey, they’re symbiotes, meaning they only lure in prey and leave the killing to something else,” Sam told her and Katie nodded in understanding.

Sam looked at the map. “I take it you’re aiming for this patch here, then you want to take this route back, the one that’ll take you through Spined Ursa territory?” she asked, pointing to the different spots on the map. “You want the pelts right?”

“Yes ma’am, that's right,” Meredith answered.

“Hmph, no need to be so polite kid, call me Sam. Anyway, if you’re all set we can head out.” Sam drained the last of her coffee and the team began heading over to the cavern exit.

As they walked, Katie sidled up to Sam.

“Hey Sam?”

“Hm? What's up kiddo?”

“What's it like being a surveyor?” Katie asked in curiosity.

“A surveyor? You interested in becoming one?” Sam asked with surprise.

“No, not yet at least. But Cheryl did approach me a little while ago about it,” Katie admitted uncomfortably.

“Cheryl? Oo she’s got you in her sights eh? Hahahaha! Better you than me! Hahaha!” Sam cackled and Katie grimaced. “Hmm, but what's it like eh? Hmm.” Sam hummed in thought as they left the cavern and entered the tunnel that would take them outside.

“Well, it's -,” she began before she was interrupted.

“How much do you get paid!” Nate butted in.

“Nate!” Katie objected.

“Paid? We get paid pretty much the same as you guys. We get paid on commission, except we don’t get paid by how much stuff we kill or by how much booty we bring back. Instead we get paid by how much we can fill the map in,” Sam enigmatically informed them.

“Huh?” Katie and Nate responded at the same time.

“Like I said, it's by how much we can fill the map in. Locations of monster nests and dens, rare resources ready to harvest, monster spawns, anything the guild can send a hunter out to kill or loot. The more valuable the score then the more we get paid for finding it. It all comes through us; the surveyor corps. Sometimes we get sent out on specific jobs like scouting missions, to see just how fucked a particular situation is, but most of the time we’re scouting out different territories or monitoring certain situations,” Sam explained while Katie listened raptly.

“How did you first get into the surveyor corps? Were you a hunter first?” Jack asked, listening in on the conversation as they rounded the first bend in the tunnel.

“Nah, I was never a hunter. I was with the other original surveyor corps members who joined the guild straight out of the army,” Sam said.

“The army?” Noah asked, now he too was listening in.

“Yep, it was back during the early days when the army was fully mobilised, before the hunters guild became a thing. Those were some rough days, when we didn’t really know how to deal with the threats we were facing. Anyway, after a while me and a bunch of other men and women began to make names for ourselves amongst the military, we were able to get into places that had sucked up entire rifleman platoons and tank brigades and get out without a scratch, or at least without dying. We became specialists in stealth and reconnaissance, came up with all sorts of tricks and tactics in doing so. So upper command started relying on us more and more for scouting and observing threats, we were also the first to start working with civilian contractors,” Sam explained.

“Civilian contractors? You mean the hunters?” Meredith asked.

“Aye, though they weren’t called that three years ago, mercenaries was more the term used back then. Anyway, the civilian we worked with most back then is someone I’ll bet you’re all familiar with, being from the North Yorkshire branch.” Sam grinned at them.

“Cheryl!” Nate happily exclaimed.

“Haha! Yeah, she worked with us the most, as the army kept outsourcing more and more extermination jobs to the civilian hunters, Cheryl relied on us to find her the best jobs and the strongest monsters for her to hunt. Back then, most other hunters didn’t really pay us any mind after we told them what to kill and where, but Cheryl saw our potential I think. She once told me that she’d go into battle armed with nothing but a rusty butter knife if she could know everything about her enemy in return.” Sam huffed in amusement.

“That's not really saying much anymore, I’ve seen her kill stuff with her bare hands,” Jack remarked.

“Hehe, I’ll bet. Anyway, after….Oxford. The army was forced to take a back seat and the newly formed hunters guild was given the task of hunting monsters for the whole UK. And Cheryl, one of the founders of the guild, well that scary bitch managed to strong arm both the government and the army into giving any of us willing to the guild. From there she formed us into the surveyor corps, we’re the eyes and the ears of the hunters guild.”