Infinite Farmer-Chapter 128: Allysi

“I’ll be there in a minute, Rossi.” Allysi rolled his eyes ever so slightly, at just enough of an angle from Rossi that he wouldn’t able to see it. “You don’t want to spend what it would cost to drag me out of here anyway.”

“Get your ass out of the seat, Allysi.”

“Oh, you do want to spend it, after all? Send the guys in. Or wait five minutes. Your call.”

Rossi looked like he was going to blow a blood vessel, but managed to keep his mouth shut as he glared pure fire at his underling. There wasn’t a door on the meeting hall, which was just as well. Tulland was pretty sure any kind of door would have been broken when Rossi slammed with all the force of his anger.

“He’s over his head. I’ve been under the direct command of four other people in the Church, not counting him. He’s the worst of all of them,” Allysi commented.

“He kept you together.” Necia watched as the troop of cleric trainees walked down the road. “That’s not nothing.”

“The danger kept us together. None of us would have survived if we were going it alone. Most of us didn’t survive on the levels where we were forced to go solo. He would have to have been bad enough for us to kick him out, and nobody had the heart for that. It was easier for everyone to keep their mouths shut and follow along.”

“You seem to be pretty outspoken about it now.”

“There was always the chance that the amulet was real. I never really bought it, but… there was always that chance. You know he never questioned it? Not when we got here and it was clearly different than what the Church said we’d see. Not months after it made sense for the System to spring any traps on us it had ready.”

“I wondered about that.” Tulland scratched his cheek. “It’s not like it was a short walk from the entrance to here.”

“Exactly. Except that it’s easy to leave open the possibility that you might escape when the alternative is never seeing your family again. We all had doubts, but the hope was free.” Allysi shook his head sadly. “Him? No doubts. Not a one. You won’t believe it, but I’ve seen it. He never considered the chance that the Church might be lying.”

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“Really? I thought they might be on certain things even before I got in here.”

“I’m not kidding. I think it’s why he got chosen for the job in the first place. He’s probably never had a thought the Church didn’t put there.” Allsyi glanced down the road, where everyone else he had come with was already out of view. “Or at least any that he didn’t feel guilty about later.”

“I got that impression too.” Tulland pulled out a chair for Allysi, then sat himself. “So what do you need from us? I can’t give your boss what he wants.”

“It’s not that.” Allysi sighed as he sat down. “I more wanted to reassure you. First, I figure you must be worried that Rossi is going to drag you into the next level on his own. You might have picked up this, but he can’t. I know what he traded to get to the same level as you. It was any allies we might have had as a group, just like he said. We all saw the window informing us of it once he decided it for us.”

“He could do that? Just make the decision for everyone?” Tulland was surprised The Infinite would let that happen. It seemed big on autonomy, for the most part. “It doesn’t seem like something that could happen here.”

“You have to understand that by the last floor, we had all committed to the group in a dozen ways over various choices. We got buffs for acting as a group and committing to the leader. We all have more stats and skills that are tied up in that. The downside is that most of them came from assigning authority to the group, and by the time everyone realized how bad Rossi was, a lot of that power lived with him.”

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“But he can’t let you go? That’s sure?”

“I think the wording was something like reject the possibility of new allies before the next safe zone. You are allies, so that means you. I think he thought it wasn’t a real expense, since we’ve hardly had outside allies anyway while we climbed. Now…”

Tulland winced. “Yeah. It seems hard. I’m not sure how much this will help or apply, but when we went to the first floor, the enemies weren’t that hard until they tried to surprise us with a formation change. How is your group at fighting in formation?”

“Not bad.” Allysi rubbed his chin. “Better than anyone else could be by this point, I think. Is that true of all the floors? It’s mostly about organization?”

“I’m not going to say it’s just that. Some of those enemies are tough. But organization is really going to help.”

“Huh.” Allysi gave them each a weak smile and rose to his feet. “I guess I have to hope it will be enough. Anyway, just know that I’ll do my best to keep everyone out of your way, if we come ba…”

Before he could leave under his own power, Allysi was gone.

“Enough of them tried to go through the arch. I guess Rossi could drag him out of here, after all.” Necia scooted her chair closer to Tulland. “Are you doing okay? I can’t even guess what this feels like for you.”

“You mean having the deaths of several people on my head? It isn’t great,” Tulland said.

“I don’t think that’s true.” Necia pointed one of her fingers down, touching the surface of the table, then pointed another one down and scooted it over to the first. “Say a person goes swimming where they shouldn’t and starts to drown. Another person swims out to save the dummy, and drowns with them. The first person isn’t responsible.”

“That’s what I’m saying. I came in through the arch and now a bunch of people are going to die because of me. That might not even be the last batch. I shouldn’t have gone swimming in the first place.”

“That’s where you are wrong. Part of why is what the arches to The Infinite are. They are places where a person can go and give themselves up to get a benefit for their world. That’s supposed to be sacred. On my world, it really was. If someone tried to block a gate, even temporarily, it was a death sentence. It was that big of a deal.”

“And?”

“Your Church should have never tried to block the gates in the first place. They shouldn’t have made a situation where people don’t know what going through the arch means. The idea of anyone actually rescuing you shouldn’t have come up.”

“But it did.”

“Yes, it still did. The bigger point is that when it did come up, your church should have told the truth about what was happening. This is like seeing someone drown, then stabbing someone to death to save them. There is no way what they were trying could have even helped. They must have known that. This sin is on their shoulders, not yours.”

Tulland tried to believe it. On some level he knew she was right, that her more complex formula for determining blame was taking into account real factors his wasn’t. Still, his simple Tulland entered, others followed math was hard to ignore.

“I see you aren’t convinced. I have one last thing.” Necia pointed down the road, where Rossi no longer was but where the whole team had disappeared to before. “Before they left, did any of them blame you? Even Rossi didn’t. They weren’t mad. On some level, all of them know this isn’t on you. Even Rossi can sense that through all his layers of delusion.”

“Right.” Tulland looked over the room, where people were still murmuring about all the stuff that had just happened. More than a few were looking directly at him and Necia, trying to figure out what the business with Allysi had been about. “I better tell them what’s up.”

Tulland stood up and walked to the de-facto stage, where he found he didn’t have to do anything to get the room’s attention. He already had it.

“Allysi just wanted to confirm that there was no chance we were going to get sucked into the gate. Apparently, they traded their right to that away until the next safe zone.”

“Really? Hell of a bad deal if so.” White looked towards the door. “Any confirmation of that?”

“Allysi disappeared right in front of me. Either he has a hell of a stealth skill or he was sucked into the next level with his group.”

“It’s true. I saw it.” Potter nodded. “Didn’t want to cause a scene before I was sure what it was. But if Tulland confirms, then we should be safe.”

“Good. Then we are clear to talk about the next floor. Now, we don’t know what to expect…”

The rest of the meeting went normally, which was almost restful for Tulland. Not that he could keep track of most of the complexities of what Potter was talking about, but Necia would give him the important bits later. For now, he was finally having a normal day again. And hopefully, there would be no more surprises before things went crazy again.