“It makes sense, after all,” Camden said as we slowly moved down the river. “Why else would you have a Choice Phase? Why wouldn’t Omen just go directly to Party Phase? There’s a whole class of tropes that deal exclusively with the choice, drawing it out and letting you modify the story, but they’re all high-level, which is why we don’t have any.”

He didn’t even have to consult the Atlas to talk on the subject. He had been through it a time or two.

“You know, I imagine that the Homibride had one of those,” I said, “how she could take parts of this storyline and fold them into her own. Now that I think of it, it was actually a Film Buff trope she was using.”

“Yeah, that sort of thing,” Camden said. “And of course some storylines have longer choice phases than others, but I don’t remember any of them lasting too long or being that meaningful. Do you guys?”

I racked my brain, trying to remember any storylines we had played through where the choice phase wasn’t just an instant blip on the plot cycle that got passed over on the way to the party phase. I seemed to remember at least once where the choice phase lasted for a while, but I couldn’t remember if it was meaningful.

Antoine was operating the boat and thinking solemnly. I didn’t know if he was even listening. The news that we were headed toward Antoine Stone and the Sunken Cradle had affected him deeply, but he had yet to tell us why.

The marshland had given way for a time to a savannah, but we could see a jungle in the distance. We knew for a fact that the Sunken Cradle took place in a jungle. It seemed a bit too easy. Were we really headed directly to our destination without any more turbulence or storylines? I assumed we’d have to run three or four storylines to get to Ramona and the others, but if the dark jungle ahead was any indication, we were almost there.

“So you’re saying that maybe one of the bad guys in this storyline has a trope that works in the choice phase?” Anna asked.

We didn’t make her ride on the top deck again. It seemed a bit cruel in hindsight.

“That’s what I’m saying,” Camden said. “It has to do with enemy tropes. That’s my bet.”

What kind of trope would allow a bad guy to take in players without actually triggering his storyline, and to what end? Attracting even more players? It would make a great trap.

“You know,” I said, “if this enemy can trap players in a storyline without actually triggering the story and postering them, that means he can attract rescuers, but they wouldn’t be able to use a rescue trope.”

I had thought about that before, but I didn’t realize that maybe that was the entire purpose of the trope. Some sort of sadistic enemy who wanted more carnage while also taking the tools that the players would need most away from them.

“On the bright side, we don’t need to worry about spoilers,” I said, “since Antoine has already played it. It’s not like we’re going in blind anyway.”

“We still might be,” Antoine said, breaking his silence.

The river was running slowly, so the engines were down low, and there was a silence as we all waited for Antoine to finish his thought.

“I don’t think that we ran the version of the story Carousel wanted us to,” he said eventually. “There was this entity, this feeling, this aura over the story, and Bobby said that whatever we did, we should try to avoid finding out what was causing it, and that’s what we did. We played it out like a straight adventure, lost treasure, swinging from vines, and stuff like that, fighting against another adventurer in the climax. I decided not to venture further, not to find out what the source of the evil was. I even blew up the tunnel that was supposed to lead toward whatever it was. I bet you money we’re not going to be able to do that again, so there may still be some rewards in this, because I can’t spoil what the story was actually about because I only know a piece.”

He never turned his eyes away from the distance as he steered the boat. He never looked at us, but as he spoke, I could tell he was doing his best not to show emotion, and he was failing. There was fear in his voice.

Most of what I knew about Antoine Stone and the Sunken Cradle came from the trailer I saw for it. While no new trailer had triggered when Ramona and the others got captured, the old one from back when Antoine ran it was still available to me.

It was a classic adventure into an ancient abandoned place, and Antoine Stone, the character, was forced to go there after vowing never to return. It was a big thing in the trailer.

I wondered how the plot would play out this time.

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“Well, you know,” I said, “you are an adventurer this time, so probably going to have a bit stronger footing on the whole thing.”

“I’ve got two tropes,” he said. “I don’t know how much of a difference that’s going to make, but it can’t hurt.”

“Actually, you have three tropes available to you,” I said.

He would be able to use his athlete tropes just fine. His original archetype didn’t go away just because he was using an advanced archetype, and while it was true that he only received two adventurer tropes, that wasn’t the extent of what was available.

I reached into my pocket and pulled a trope from thin air.

It was one of the tropes that had been used to communicate with me by the insider, or our friends in high places, as we called them back then.

For the first time, Antoine looked over at me. He seemed to remember the ticket and reached out and grabbed it while he looked it over.

“That could be useful,” he said as he equipped the trope. “A companion. Somebody who knows about the storyline. Could make up for my failure.”

“Yeah,” I said, “Don’t be so hard on yourself. And, hey, maybe all you need to do is take his clothes and gear so you look the part. It would still be worth it.”

He laughed, but I think he was just being polite. There was no joking away his anxiety over what was up ahead.

As I watched his face, suddenly he became very serious.

“We have trouble,” he said.

I heard the sound of gunfire in the distance, and engines roaring, as a man on an ATV burst out of the jungle ahead of us, followed by a series of light utility vehicles, similar to jeeps, pouring out of the forest after him. Gunmen were hanging out of the sides trying to shoot him.

“That’s a Paragon,” Anna said.

I was much more concerned about the people with the guns, but she was right. The man on the four-wheeler was a paragon, and he was headed across a field straight toward us, waving his arms.

“Is this an Omen?” Antoine asked.

“No,” I said.

“It’s an ally,” Anna said. “I can see him on the red wallpaper.”

“Me too,” Cassie said.

They both had tropes for checking in on their allies on the red wallpaper. Anna could look at general well-being, and Cassie could look at health.

“I think that trope activated,” I said. “I think we need to get him. He may be our companion.”

Antoine steered hard to the right to try to intercept the man on the ATV as he gunned for the river.

We barely made it there in time.

“Hit the deck,” Antoine said as the bullets from the men in the four-by-fours started hitting the water near us.

I got down, but not too far down. I couldn’t miss the thrills.

Antoine did his best to get as close to the riverside as he could, and as the man on the ATV neared us, he stood up, jumping up onto the seat, and just as he got to the river’s edge, but before the ATV was in the water, he jumped and let the momentum carry him all the way over to the edge of our boat, where he grabbed onto one of the rails and screamed, “Gun it!”

Antoine did just that as we somehow escaped a hail of bullets and a pontoon boat.

But of course, that was too easy.

The man was tall, muscular, and clever-looking. He spoke with a faint South American accent, and he was dressed as the pitch-perfect explorer. It was as if he had just crawled out of an Indiana Jones movie.

On the red wallpaper, his name was Dr. Gabriel “Bones” Ibarra. His plot armor was fifty, and most of his tropes were grayed out, which meant he was a paragon. I could see some of them, all of them adventurer tropes.

“Does this thing speed up?” he yelled, staring behind us.

As I followed his gaze, I saw two speed boats in hot pursuit. Where they had come from, it wasn’t clear. The river was pretty big at that place. There was nowhere for them to have hidden. They must have just appeared out of nowhere.

“We’re not getting away from them in this, are we?” the man said. “Bear with me. This will only take a moment.”

One of the speedboats pulled up to the right of us. They had their guns drawn and ready.

Doctor Ibarra, or perhaps Bones if he would want me to call him that, unholstered his own firearm, an antique-looking revolver, and laid out cover fire for himself with three quick shots, causing the men in the boats to dodge down for cover.

When they did, Bones jumped from the pontoon over into the speed boat, past one of the gunmen. When another gunman stood in his way, he punched the guy out, sending him flying over the back of the speed boat and into the water.

Bones pushed further, opening up a compartment on the boat and pulling out an anchor and rope before making his way back up the boat, quickly tying one end of the rope to a cleat at the front and dropping the anchor in the water.

He then did an about turn, running back to the back of the boat, punching out another of the gunmen as he stood up trying to shoot, and then, a few seconds later, when the full length of the rope on the anchor had fallen into the water, suddenly the speed boat stopped, taking a nosedive right into the river, and as it did, it smoothly launched Bones upward and forward enough that he could grab onto the side of the pontoon in one smooth motion.

Unfortunately, the final gunman was grabbing onto him, but Bones was able to kick the man in the face, sending him flying into the water.

The other speedboat quickly slowed down to help rescue the fallen gunmen.

Bones crawled from the outside of the pontoon over the railing and into the interior of the boat, where he finally took a moment to evaluate us.

“So, I hear you are some crazy sons of guns,” he said smoothly. “I also hear you have an impossible task ahead of you. I am here to help. My name is Bones Ibarra, and I have been waiting a very long time to meet you.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep