The Gengar found Petar Iliescu on a Monday and just stuck to him like glue after that.
Petar didn't complain about it at the time, though later he realized that was probably where he went wrong.
He got off on Floor Nineteen and saw the thing just floating there by the window, arms folded, grinning. Right on cue, Petar's death-sense went off.
He'd had that sense for about eight months now, ever since he took the Corpse Collector pathway. It changed how he perceived things around him. He always knew where dead bodies were.
The weird part was that the Gengar felt dead.
But it also felt completely alive, hovering four feet off the carpet with its tongue out. A total contradiction. Petar stood there trying to make sense of it, and then he made the mistake of using his Skill to inspect it directly.
The Gengar stopped floating.
It flipped around in the air, very slowly, and stared right at him.
"Heh. Sorry," Petar said.
The Gengar drifted across the corridor until it was right in front of his face, its grin getting even wider. Then it sank straight down into Petar's shadow, passed right through it, and popped up on the other side. Then it did it again.
Petar felt it both times. That was the part that stuck with him. He had been holding four undead creatures bound to him for nine years, but he had never felt anything move through his own shadow before. It didn't hurt or anything, it felt like a cat climbing over his feet. He just stood there in the hallway with his arms out, feeling weirded out.
After that, it didn't leave. It followed him to the canteen. It followed him down to the sub-basement and spent ten minutes staring at Gerald with what looked like professional interest.
Eventually Petar gave up and went back to work with a ghost following him around.
Director Hels Korven came up to Floor Forty on Thursday with two deputies and a folder. He stayed standing for the first few minutes.
"Off the record," Korven said, "I've been in guild relations for eleven years and I've never had to call a guild four times about a land offer. Most leaders would have jumped at this."
"I know. Sorry about that." Adam poured him a coffee without asking and set it on the table. "Brandt wasn't going to sign anything while I was out, and he was right not to. Sit down. We're taking it."
Korven sat down. "You don't even know which sector it is yet."
"Let's see."
Korven opened the folder and turned a printed map toward him. A heavy blue line was drawn across it, redrawn by hand in a few places. Adam looked at it for a second, then pointed to the far edge.
"That one."
"That one," Korven said.
"Because nobody else wanted it."
"Well, kind of." Korven didn't try to make it sound better than it was, which Adam appreciated. "Sector Nine. It's our furthest forward position. It sits right against the southern belt, which is currently the only place left on the planet where they're still building anything. We're eighty percent through clearing this world, Adam. The remaining twenty percent is nine kilometers away from this land."
"So we'd be the closest guild on the planet to the active front."
"Yes."
"And you are surprised the other guilds turned it down?"
"It's more nuanced." Korven turned his cup around on the table. "I'll be straight with you. It isn't a reward. It's a hard piece of ground, it's exposed, and it will get attacked. The only reason I'm offering it to a Tier 2 guild is because you guys retook Sector Five by yourselves in three days while four Tier 1 guilds were still writing up their plan."
Ren looked up from the end of the table. "What's on the sector right now?"
"A perimeter wall, a spire, and about four hundred people who have been asking to be rotated out for a while now." Korven looked at her. "They're getting pulled out regardless. What happens to the spot after that depends on what you say here."
Adam looked back down at the map. He had already made up his mind in the elevator on the way up.
"We'll take it," Adam said. "I want three things."
"Go ahead."
"First. Our own supply line through the gate. I don't want our crates routed through Zone Zero, and if the front moves, I don't want my people waiting behind everyone else."
"That's already written into the agreement."
"Good. Second, full salvage rights on anything that dies on our land. Same terms we had at Five."
One of Korven's deputies opened his mouth to object, but Korven raised his hand to quiet him.
"Done. What's the third?"
"The standing team requirement," Adam said. "You want three Level 5s on site at all times. We only have three Level 5s total right now. If one of us gets hurt, we're breaking contract. I'm not signing that. I want at least ninety days from the day we land to get a fourth Level 5 on the team, and during those ninety days, the requirement stays at three."
"And if you don't have a fourth in ninety days?"
"Then you take the sector back, we forfeit whatever we built, and I won't complain about it."
Korven stared at him for a moment. "You have someone specific in mind."
"Yeah. But he doesn't know it yet, and I want to keep it that way. If he finds out, he'll do something stupid to rush his level ups." Adam pushed the map back across. "Ninety days."
"Ninety days," Korven agreed, pulling out a pen.
Brandt read through the signed copy twice, put it down on his desk, and rubbed his face.
"Sector Nine."
"Yep."
"Do you want the death rate for Nine over the last two rotations, or should I keep it to myself?"
"Tell me on Monday during the briefing." Adam sat on the edge of the desk. "How many people can we send?"
"Sixty max on active rotation. Level 3 and up, six-week shifts. We can't send more without gutting our defense teams here in Kerenth, and I'm not doing that." Brandt was already making notes. "Marchand will want to go, and she should. Korva will want to go, I'd rather she stayed, but she won't listen to me. Adeyemi has to go because we need a senior medic. Mori is going to ask, but the answer is no until we sort out why he screwed up on patrol."
"What about you?"
"I'm staying here to run the guild house," Brandt said without looking up. "Don't make a big deal out of it. Someone has to manage this side of the gate and it's not going to be you."
"I wasn't going to say anything."
"You were thinking it."
"No..."
Brandt kept writing. "Eighteen days. That's how long I need to set up logistics. Not a day less."
"Eighteen days works."
"It doesn't 'work,' it's just what I need." He tore the page off his notepad. "Now tell me about the Pokémon. Let's also assign them to their posts."
Petar came up to Adam's office on Friday morning.
"Boss," Petar said. "About Gengar, is it dead or alive?"
"Oh." Adam shifted his position. "Honestly, I don't know. It eats, it sleeps, it gets bored. It holds grudges. It also walks through walls, and I saw it stick its whole head into a rock the other day just to see what was inside. That whole species is like that. Not really dead, not really alive. They're just somewhere in the middle and don't care."
"That's not an official category."
"Nope."
"There's no system classification for it?"
"Ghost-type Pokémon," Adam said, smiling. "Closest I can think of."
Adam made some tea and handed a cup to Petar.
"You cleared your last Level 3, right?" Adam asked.
"Yeah. Two weeks ago."
"What was it like?"
"L3-0977." Petar looked down at his mug. "It was actually really similar to our world. Gates opening, monsters coming out, people going in to clear them. They called them Hunters over there. They had guilds and ranks and everything. Walking into their lobby felt like walking into ours."
"Did you join a guild over there?"
"For twelve days, yeah." Petar hesitated. "I cleared the domain on day nineteen, but I stayed for the full duration."
"Why did you stay?"
"Nobody over there thought I was weird," Petar said. "That's really it. I walked into their guild hall with four undead walking behind me, and the guy behind the counter just asked for my rank and offered me a drink. Felt like a fresh start."
"I don't care that you stayed the extra eleven days," Adam said. "You cleared the gate, you didn't break any rules. Liking your work isn't a crime. Korva likes fighting way more than you do and I don't yell at her for it." He took a sip of tea.
"So you signed the sector deal?" Petar asked.
"Yeah. Sector Nine."
Petar set his cup down. "Boss... Nine is less than ten kilometers from the front belt."
"I know. But it's got a wall, a spire, direct supplies, and we get full salvage rights. In a year, that's going to be the most important spot on the planet." Adam looked at him. "We leave in seventeen days. Level 3s and up."
Petar thought about it. "I'm Level 4."
"You are."
"I could volunteer for the first rotation."
"You could," Adam said. "But I'd rather you didn't."
"Why?"
"Because we need three Level 5s on site at all times for the contract, and right now we only have three. If one of us gets injured, we fail the contract. I got a ninety-day extension to get a fourth Level 5." Adam laid it out directly. "If you do two more clears at your own tier, you'll hit Level 5. If you spend the next six weeks standing on a wall in Sector Nine, you'll just come back tired and still be Level 4, and I'll have wasted six weeks of my extension."
Petar listened quietly.
"I'm not guaranteeing you the Level 5 spot," Adam added. "If you rush into an expedition and get killed, I lose a friend and I have to tell your mom. But that's why I want you focused on leveling right now."
"Take a week off before you enter another gate. Don't rush back in tomorrow."
"I feel fine."
"It took you an hour at the gate to summon those four, and Brandt said you were exhausted for two days after. Take the week."
"Alright, Boss."
"Also Petar, I authorized the next potion for you, good luck."
"Thank you."
Petar stood up to leave. The Lucario was sitting by the door, watching him with its ears back.
As Petar walked toward the door, the Lucario stood up, walked over, and placed one paw flat against Petar's chest. It held it there for two seconds, looking up at him.
Then it turned around and walked back to the window.
"What was that?" Petar asked.
"It senses aura and personality," Adam said. "It's been trying to figure you out since you got here. Looks like it finally decided you're okay."
"Took it long enough."
"You're walking around with four corpses. Give him a break."
On Friday evening, Adam gathered everyone in the main hall downstairs. It was packed with over two hundred people.
He didn't make a big motivational speech. He just stood on the stairs with the contract and gave them the facts: where Sector Nine was, what was around it, and what the casualty numbers were for the last couple of months.
"Sixty people per rotation," Adam said. "Six-week shifts, Level 3 and above. Volunteers first. If we don't get sixty volunteers, I'll pick the rest myself. Nobody is going to judge you if you don't volunteer. Half of you have been here less than a year."
He looked over the crowd.
"Also, we didn't have to take this job. The Commission couldn't force us. I said yes because we're strong enough for it and I want our guild to own a piece of that map before the world clear finishes. If you think that's a bad reason, come talk to me in my office."
Someone near the back shouted out asking if the Pokémon were coming.
"Some of them," Adam said. "The big guy is going. He hates being inside the building anyway, so he'll like being out on the open rock. And the Gengar is definitely coming."
A lot of people laughed at that.
By Saturday afternoon, two hundred and forty people had signed up. Only a hundred and nine were actually high enough level, so Brandt spent most of Sunday telling Level 1s that the level requirement wasn't optional.
Petar deployed nine days later at 5:15 AM from the Floor One gate.
Brandt was behind the desk like usual. Marchand came down in a coat over her pajamas to tell Petar not to bring back any gross monster parts, then went back to sleep. Korva just texted him win.
The Gengar walked with Petar to the edge of the teleport pad, but stopped right at the line. Petar looked back at it once.
"Alright, let's go," Petar said to his summons.
The pad flashed, and he was gone.
On their last morning before leaving, Ren drove out to the nearby lake by herself.
She spent an hour sitting on the grass talking to a twenty-foot-long water snake, explaining why it couldn't come to the war zone and had to stay in the lake where there were plenty of fish. The snake rested its huge head in her lap for a while before letting her go.
In the elevator, she looked at the floor buttons and muttered, "It's going to be giant by the time we get back."
"It's going to eat every fish in that lake," Adam said.
"Yeah. It's probably fine." She shrugged. "Whatever."
Aah, she's cute when she's sad. She had to leave the Milotic behind and she's pretending she didn't.
At ten o'clock that night, Brandt came up to Adam's office holding a paper form.
"We need to resolve a few shipments," Brandt said.
"I thought you finished that," Adam said.
"I've been trying to." Brandt held up the paper. "Species box. It's this small. I have half a tonne of unclassified creatures and the Commission clerk rejected it because I don't have exact species names."
Ren was lying on the couch with her eyes closed. "Write dog."
"I'm not writing dog."
"Write big dog."
"I hate both of you," Brandt said, turning around and walking back down the hallway with his form.
"Should we tell him about pokeballs?" Adam said.
"Wait, you didn't tell him?" Ren looked baffled.
"Well... I forgot."
"BRANDTTT, wait..." Adam rushed out after him.
AN: If we get to 200 power stones, I will release an extra chapter on 400, another one. If you wish to support the story and read ahead, visit [email protected]/skeri123