One of the weird parts of the Shop was the list of mundane items. You could buy a toilet from the shop, pipes for plumbing, even a window unit air conditioner. The list of mundane items was inexhaustible.

One of the things they had that Kevin had utilized a great deal during his time in the Mystical 7 Layers was an ordinary, battery operated alarm clock. Two of them actually. Kevin didn’t want to get up, so he would put one alarm across the room, and the other in a different location across from that. One alarm would get up, he’d stumble out of bed, turn it off. Right about the time he got back to bed to lay down, the other alarm would go off and he’d have to walk to that alarm and shut it off.

If he thought preemptively, he would walk from one alarm to the other to wait for it to go off, or if he was being especially tricky, shut it off in advance. But both those acts resulted in him waking up enough to be able to find the motivation to stay away and get to work.

Today was wildly different though. The moment the first alarm went off, barely 3 and a half hours after Kevin had laid down, he sprang out of bed. He drank down a recovery potion, he felt like he was living on them the last day or two, had a low-tier healing pill and exploded the door to pieces, a rather cathartic expression of his desire to get moving considering he wasn’t able to so much as scratch the doors of the skyscrapers. However, that was before. Maybe with Intermediate Axe Energy he could do a fair bit better.

Kevin was running down the Ship Bridge only a few minutes after waking up. Kevin used Soul Tracker to ping Katie, then his mom then everyone else. Kevin transitioned up onto an absolutely massive ship he recognized as an aircraft carrier. The moment he landed on the ship he heard a somewhat unusual sound. The wailing cry of morankai, several of them. Kevin was running from the front of the bow of the carrier to the stern, from the front to the back. From one of the pages his Seekers found, Kevin remembered reading that the structure on top of an aircraft carrier is called ‘th island’. At least twenty morankai poured from the island.

Kevin knew immediately that he wasn’t going to be able to just run past this bunch, he could see that ten of the creatures were abnormal morankai. More disturbingly, they all seemed to be of a similar type. Especially elongated arms, with fingers that ended in claws resembling large cats. Kevin stopped running immediately and tapped his ring. He pulled out his bow, planted his feet and drew, tapping his ring again to put an arrow on the ready string. He infused the arrow with intermediate axe energy and reduced its weight with Light Heavy. The arrow flew at the oncoming horde with similar speed to a bullet. He didn’t even necessarily try to hit any specific morankai, just firing into the horde. Kevin drew, tapped and fired another arrow before the first was there.

— Points Obtained: Points 10 —

— Points Obtained: Points 13 —

The next arrow hit an abnormal morankai. It knocked the creature down but it didn’t kill it. Kevin tapped and fired another arrow, hitting another abnormal morankai, but the shot was clean.

— Points Obtained: Points 234 —

Kevin only had time for one more arrow before he’d need to prepare for the assault. He drew and fired on another abnormal to make the fight a little less hectic. There was no way this went great.

Kevin tapped his armor ring and donned his black diamond armor. He tapped his shield ring and put the kite shield on his back over his storage backpack. He tapped his storage ring and pulled out his tower shield.

Then he tapped his ring and pulled out a bucket full of items he found in the mundane section of the Shop - caltrops. He pushed some axe energy into the caltrops, which admittedly didn’t take the energy well, but they did take some of it. Kevin scattered them out in front of him. Finally he tapped his ring, pulled two throwing hatchets out, infused them with axe energy and threw them at the rush of morankai just before they ran over the caltrops. One morankai was hit directly in its face.

—- Points Obtained: Points 11 —

Another was hit in its chest just as it took two steps over the caltrops. It was blasted onto its back landing on the caltrops. It was slowed but not dead. Kevin pulled out his double bit freezing axe, covered his shield in shield energy and activated Light Heavy to make it weigh a figurative tonne.

Morankai shrieked as caltrops pierced their feet, spoiling their footing and balance and making them fall. The first, helpfully, landed just to the right of Kevin’s shield in perfect strike range to be beheaded, Kevin obliged it.

—- Points Obtained: Points 14 —

Three abnormal morankai crashed into Kevin all at once, but, safe behind his Light Heavy shield he barely moved an inch back, retaliating immediately with a vicious sideways chop that took the head and shoulder off one morankai and the arm off another.

— Points Obtained: Points 252 —

Kevin activated Light Heavy to make his shield lighter and brought it up in defense from a strike from above. In the same motion, he brought the axe in a back hand swing to take off the morankai’s leg below the knee. The crippled morankai, minus one arm and one leg, fell to the ground sideways. Kevin pushed the third morankai back with his tower shield, activated Light Heavy and brought the tower shield down on the downed abnormal’s head with a sickening crunch.

—- Points Obtained: Points 184 —-

Kevin swung his axe and took the heads of two normal morankai that got past the caltrops.

—- Points Obtained: Points 12 —

—- Points Obtained: Points 15 —

He brought the freezing axe down on another abnormal morankai, but the bit caught in the morankai’s shoulder. Kevin let go of the axe and pushed the creature away. He pulled another throwing hatchet out and threw it at a normal morankai.

— Points Obtained: Points 12 —

Kevin had been maneuvering and tactically retreating since the first engagement at the caltrops, using the caltrops to slow the morankai and spread out their attack. If he hadn’t, he likely wouldn’t have been able to keep up with that many abnormals. As it was, the four of them were converging on him all at once.

Kevin withdrew a chain and threw it at one morankai in hopes of tripping it up while he took two steps in the opposite direction to engage the abnormal on his right. He tapped his ring and brought out his viking dane axe. He brought it down on the creatures knee but its back stepped and slapped the head down. Kevin was so stunned he almost missed defending from the morankai in front.

He took the blow on his shield and counter swung, the morankai jumped back out of the way, just as the morankai to Kevins left stepped in and grabbed his shield. Kevin might have been stronger than a normal morankai but he wasn’t stronger than these abnormals. It ripped his shield away from him just as the morankai to the right threw a hail mary swipe at him. Kevin reinforced his helmet with shield energy and met the blow, pulling the long axe back to jab the head at that morankai. He hit it in the gut and the tip of the bit pierced flesh.

Kevin brought the long axe up like a bow staff and rebuffed the attack of the morankain to the center but was hit by the morankai that had been tangled in his chains. Kevin stumbled but was able to stay on his feet as he clipped the morankai with the long axe, using another bow staff technique to pull the morankai off him, then he slashed its throat. Kevin saw a points notification from the morankai that had slowly been freezing to death from his double bit axe as this morankai began bleeding out.

Kevin swung his axe again, telegraphing the blow and allowing the morankai to catch his axe. He kicked it to make space and then followed it through the gap he made, rolling toward the frozen morankai and coming up with the double bit in hand. He tapped his ring and got the single bit Fire Axe out too. In the same rolling motion he struck another normal morankai across its belly and its armpit.

— Points Obtained: Points 12 —

Kevin stood and kicked a morankai back onto the caltrops he had circled from the side, slowing it further before blocking an attack with his double bit, the brief touch of the blade on the morankai’s hand sufficient to begin a freezing process. Kevin dodged two strikes and took the opportunity to shatter the frozen appendage with a well placed elbow before leveling the creature with a second elbow strike.

The downed morankai died a moment later with an axe in its forehead.

— Points Obtained: Points 213 —

Kevin threw his double bit axe at a normal morankai, and his fire axe at an abnormal, then tapped his ring again to pull out a pelte shield, a mostly round shield with a cutout at the the top, famously used by Brad Pitt in Achilles during his fight with Troy’s Hector. Achilles used the pelte cutout as a stabilizing point, which is exactly what Kevin used it as with his long Halberd.

The morankai came in fighting. Typically Kevin constantly utilized Light Heavy to alternate between light movements and heavy blows, but he needed speed over everything right now, so he focused instead on making his halberd as light as possible, while infusing as much axe energy into the weapon as possible. The shield was already light, so instead he put every bit of shield reinforcement onto it as he could.

Each swipe Kevin took was blocked on an angle to push the momentum away from him and give him mobility to bring the longer weapon quickly into play. He used his Cloud Step shoes to constantly put the caltrops between himself and the remaining morankai.

Every opportunity he could to strike at a normal morankai, or take the limb of an abnormal, he took.

Gasping for breath, Kevin brought his halberd down on the last of the 10 abnormal morankai.

— Points Obtained: Points 202 —

That was, without doubt, the hardest fight Kevin had had in a long time. “Things got pretty hairy there for a minute.” He said to himself, taking out a bottle of water and another low-tier healing pill.

Kevin removed his armor and collected his various weapons; he didn’t pick up the caltrops as many of them were covered in the acidic blood of the morankai that now littered the deck of the large vessel.

Kevin moved away from the carnage he had brought, deciding this was as good a place as any to take a break. He walked to the island and threw open the door, the light pelte shield and his fire axe still in hand. He climbed the stairs up to the top of the island, exiting through a hatch in the top. The island of the carrier wasn’t the tallest structure Kevin had seen on the grand Ship Bridge, but it was one of the taller structures, and it was right here. Perfect.

Kevin looked out. As far as he could see behind him, he could see only ships. And as far as he could see in front, ships. It had really barely been 24 hours since he stepped foot on the ship bridge, but already he’d felt like he’d been here for weeks.

He pulled out a lighter lunch, an absolutely stacked BLT with some fries.

He sent out his customary Soul Tracker ping of Katie, it soothed him to know that she was alive. He hoped she was safe. “Only a little longer now K.” Kevin said. “I hope.” He added.

He pinged his mother, the angle of her direction actually had changed a lot. Kevin wasn’t sure yet what that meant but he did know that it could be significant. He’d just keep an eye on her too, he hated to have to choose, but honestly, there was no choice. Kevin wanted his mom safe, but he Needed Katie to be safe and it was his job to do that. He spared a moment to think about his Wife and their other daughter, Delilah. They must be worried sick about Katie. Though the time difference was in their favor, Katie had been on the First Layer about a month, from the perspective of Samantha and Delilah, Katie would have only been gone for maybe a few days at most.

From their perspective Kevin had been gone for only a little more than a month. That was good for them at least.

Kevin pinged the golden morankai, almost out of habit, and so was somewhat surprised to feel a ping return directly below him.

“Huh.” Kevin said. “I was not expecting that. Now I just have to take a detour.” Kevin lamented the necessity but couldn’t miss out on the points of a golden morankai. Especially since he knew there was no way Cameron or Lee would find this one.

Besides, he had things he planned to get for Katie, and this golden morankai was going to help. He had too many points to kill the high value target, so he opened the Shop and purchased a mid-tier healing pill for 8,000 points.

He started working his way down inside of the carrier. It felt more like a maze than he was immediately willing to admit. Kevin had to routinely ping the golden morankai, stopping several times to kill random morankai walking throughout the ship. As he drew nearer to the golden morankai, he felt like they were actively pursuing him. Kevin did not like the feeling of being hunted. He wasn’t in any particular danger, all of them being normal so far, but still, he found the improved coordination of the morankai on this ship to be unsettling.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Kevin zigzagged down into the bowels of the ship. He finally found himself on what he thought might be the same deck as the golden morankai. He started to proceed with a bit more caution, actively reinforcing his armor and his axe ready. He opened a rather large metal door, which wasn’t that abnormal considering most of the doors were metal. As soon as he opened the door, he realized he was entering the generator room for the carrier, a moment after that he was attacked by two normal morankai and an abnormal. The abnormal was pitch black, lacking any of the depth and contour lines of the regular black morankai. It was like it had bathed in vantablack before attacking Kevin,

The strike was deflected by Kevin’s shield, but suddenly Kevin’s shield weighed what felt like infinitely more than normal. Kevin switched his Light Heavy to lessen the weight to keep the shield in play, but it had absolutely no effect at all. He was still just able to get it back in play for the second strike from the abnormal morankai. This time the shield became totally unusable. Kevin let go of the shield and kicked at the abnormal to create distance. The moment his shoe hit the creature his shoe felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. Luckily the kick had landed and the abnormal was tossed back.

“Oh for fuck sake” Kevin cried adjusting his position. He slashed the throat of one normal morankai before striking another with an open palm to push it back. He dodged a strike from the third morankai, pivoting on his heavy shoe before bringing up his axe beneath the chin of the third and taking its face off. It dropped just as the second recovered. Kevin put his axe in its head. Rather than continue fighting with the pitch black morankai, Kevin threw his axe at it.

— Points Obtained: Points 234 —

Kevin’s shoe finally felt light enough to lift and he went and collected his shield. “That was so weird,” Kevin said as he pinged the golden morankai, assuming he was going to have to chase it now that he had made a big enough commotion killing its guards.

However, as he walked to the aisle between the generators, a relatively narrow gap, he saw it standing passively there. Its back was to him and it looked at the back wall away from Kevin. It was just standing there totally motionless. He hesitated for only a second before bringing his axe down on its head, killing it instantly.

— Points Obtained: Points 16,393 —

“That is Soooo weird!” Kevin said again.

— Points Cap reached: Points 100,000 Points —

“Damn, I thought I lowered it enough. Eh at least I probably didn’t miss out on too many.” Kevin said. Then he looked back up. He noticed something odd. A black opalescent orb was floating in front of where the golden morankai had died. “It must have been looking at this thing.” Kevin said.

He inspected the orb, reaching out and touching it. It was only a little larger than a grapefruit, but it was smooth to the touch like glass. It felt like a perfect sphere to him.

The orb flashed white suddenly, instantly Kevin’s shield was up, his heart beating hard putting him on high alert. He waited a second in guard, before lowering it and looking at the orb again.

“Oh wow, the big strong man who can wipe out a pack of abnormal super zombies afraid of a little tiny, admittedly creepy, floating black death orb.” Kevin said, chastising himself.

He continued studying the orb for much longer than he should have but he was a little transfixed considering he’d been all over the first layer and in just one brief period of time had seen a whole list of shit he’d never seen before. After another couple minutes of studying the orb, during which time it startled him by flashing brightly two more times, Kevin had a hunch he wanted to test.

He activated Soul Tracker looking for the orb. Kevin received a ping back. Inherently, Kevin understood the ability, it worked for people he was close to, people whose souls had left an impact on him, and he on them - generally this meant people he was really close with. There was a reason he hadn’t tried to find most of his acquaintances or even his friends. He just wasn’t close enough to them.

But. It also worked with monsters - monsters that Kevin took the time to understand. It worked with normal morankai because they were more or less the same. It didn’t work with abnormals because they differed from each other wildly. It worked with golden morankai because they were basically just fancy normal morankai. The fact that Kevin got a ping back from this orb meant it was basically a monster, at least from the perspective of his power.

Kevin was hesitant to spend too many points on specific gear that Katie or anyone else might want, he didn’t know what abilities if any they had picked up so getting ahead of himself was a bad idea. That being said, he wanted to spend some points just in case this orb ended up being worth something. So he did what he had often done, he purchased mid-tier healing pills.

Kevin had only had to use one or two of these in his time on the first layer, once when he lost his whole god damned arm in a fight with an abnormal he hadn’t blocked well enough, and the other time when he took a blow and didn’t reinforce his armor well enough and broke several of his ribs and probably his back.

Both times, the mid-tier had healed him up right quick. It felt like rubbing icy-hot directly on his bones while electrocuting him, but he had his arm and he had his spine so he wasn’t going to complain.

Kevin stored his tower shield and got his fire axe ready. He brought the axe down like a medieval executioner and … absolutely nothing happened. The black bounced off it like he’d … well literally anything in the first layer besides these weird bridge boats.

Kevin frowned. “Well fuck that.” He said as he checked his fire axe for damage, stored it, and then pulled out his viking style long dane axe. He put a little more juice into the swing, a little more juice into the axe and a little more juice into the Light Heavy.

The axe bounced off again. The orb flashed white. Kevin about lost his whole composure, but it was just a flash and Kevin checked his skittishness. A little. He pulled out the tower shield and decided he’d hide behind it … er keep it close to hand just in case.

Kevin again, check his axe for damage and looked at the orb. “I really shouldn’t waste any more time on this. He said as he stored his viking dane axe … and pulled out his halberd. His halberd was his heaviest weapon, one of his most expensive weapons - meaning it was the most durable, sharpest, best bitted axe. The halberd also enhanced his attacks in a straightforward manner - adding its own boosts to the attack on top of the axe energy and Light Heavy abilities.

Kevin took a moment, took a breath, infused the axe with the maximum amount of intermediate axe energy as he could - a process that somewhat strained his soul after the full day of fighting and the rough fights he’d had in the last hour. His halberd weighed over twenty pounds, which didn’t matter to him, except that he activated Light Heavy to its fullest, first making it lighter than a pound total, then as he brought it down on the orb, reversing it so it weighed a full metric tonne - over two thousand pounds.

The halberd crashed into the orb. And bounced off. Kevin’s control over Light Heavy allowed him to change the weight in time to not be a big problem but he swore out loud. “devils dirty ass hole what the … “ Kevin ducked down behind his tower shield just in time to avoid a white beam that blasted where his head was. He turned and saw the hole it put in the metal wall of the ship. He reached out and touched his shield, reinforcing it a fraction of a second before it was struck by a second beam. Kevin rolled to his left and stood up, pulling the pelte shield out of his ring, because there was now a hole in his fucking shield half an inch from where his head was.

“... fuck!” Kevin finished the sentence he had started then looked at his shield. “Oh you piece of shit lets do this one more time.”

He took a moment to buy a few interesting items from the shop. One was some adhesive, the description of which said that items bonded with the glue could only be unbound with the anti adhesive agent, so Kevin bought that too. He also bought a Boiling Dragon Ginseng Booster, which boosted his physical stats by several degrees. It tended to wear you out a little extra, so Kevin hoped this would be worth it.

Next, he pulled out all three 100 lbs dumbbells from his storage, using the adhesive to glue them to the halberd, one on each side of the bit towards the shaft and one on the back of the shaft where the beak was. Then for good measure he added the 50 lbs kettlebell to the 100 lbs dumbbell. Fortunately, combined with Kevin’s control over Light Heavy, the glue functionally made the weight literally part of the halberd so his Light Heavy ability allowed it to be made light as a broom.

Kevin took a few steps back. He then ran and jumped as high as he could, the tall ceilings in the generator room allowing him a fair bit of height. He weighed himself down immensely with Light Heavy to several thousand pounds, he swung the lightened, modified weapon down with all the force of his cultivator body, he switched the weight with Light Heavy and brought the the full weight of 36,500 lbs of halberd, enhanced to its maximum with intermediate axe energy, an energy that specialized in penetrating and damaging even without, the halberd adding its own inherent boosts, all crashing down onto the small orb.

Kevin watched as a crack appeared in the orb from the top, bisecting the orb into two. Then, a huge white flash exploded from the orb causing Kevin to almost forget to reverse the Light Heavy on his body. The orb fell to the ground, clanking loudly off the hard floor but not breaking apart. .

— Points Obtained: Points 18,423 —

— Reward Obtained: Reward - Intermediate Soul Enrichment —

— Reward Obtained: Reward - Conqueror's Spoils —

An odd voice sounded in his head, with the voice came a presence. The sensation was impossible to put into words, but Kevin figured this is what someone who had “heard the voice of God” might have felt. Each syllable from the voice sounded entirely different from the previous, different accents, different intonations even male to female, young to old. It sounded as though a hundred people were each speaking in his head only one fluid syllable at a time.

“Congratulations. You have stepped beyond the limits of the first layer for humanity. You are the first person to achieve this. Move forward bravely, human, and survive the seven layers.”

“What in the hells was that?:” Kevin said, putting his hand to his head. “Was that the literal voice of God? What does that even mean.” It sounded a little too standard-script for Kevin to put too much reverence to the words or the speaker behind it.

Shrugging, Kevin checked the notification for Minute Soul Enrichment.

— Intermediate Soul Enrichment: Is a process in which a being’s soul is enhanced on a fundamental level, imbued with energy to become qualitatively stronger, a sufficiently powerful soul can step beyond the limits of its body or beyond the limits of reality itself. —

With the reading of this description came an understanding similar to the understanding, an instinctual knowledge one got when they added an ability. “Much more helpful.” Kevin said.

This soul enrichment obviously increased the quality of Kevin’s soul. Likely it was similar to increasing the quality of your body through Ki Cultivator or some other similar process. It felt like it meant his soul would improve faster, better, stronger, be tougher the whole nine yards. For a brief second after seeing the notification, Kevin had felt a stretching sensation inside himself, he supposed that was the effects of this soul enhancement on his …well … soul. He should have felt more tired from the near constant fighting, to say nothing of the amount of sheer energy he had expended on that last strike to break the core down. But, his soul felt fresh as a daisy. His body was still tired but he felt better than he had when he came down here.

“Wait” Kevin said, noticing that his points value was higher than it should be. “Status.”

Status: Name Kevin Moses

Points: 102,765

Race: Human

Soul Quality: ✪

Age: 35

Stats: Strength: 150

Endurance: 127

Recovery: 87-88

Soul: 21-31

Abilities: 5/7

Soul Tracker

Ki Cultivator Earth Tier (Middle)

Basic Shield Mastery (5/5)

Intermediate Axe Mastery (1/5)

Ceaseless Mind

“Whoa.” Kevin said, continuing to talk out loud, “A one star soul huh? That’s new. I wonder how high up that goes. Oh nice a huge increase in my soul stat too. Makes me feel all tingly. And lookie lookie. I have more than 100,000 points. My point cap must have gone up. I should find out how high.”

Kevin looked back at the notifications and looked at the other one he got.

— Reward Obtained: Reward - Conqueror's Spoils---

The description for this one read: Conqueror’s Spoils. You have pushed the bounds of what is possible in The Mystical Seven Layers. This ability adds an additional ability slot holding the place of that ability slot. It can Unlock any Locked ability from the Shop. Once unlocked, that ability takes the place of Conqueror’s Spoils.

New ability acquired. Accept the ability? (Y/N)

Kevin looked at the notification, his jaw falling open. If he was reading this right, he would have an additional ability slot, one that could be filled uniquely. He opened The Shop and noticed that some abilities were locked for various reasons, the main reason seemed to be due to a limited number available, such as the various “Ruler Type” abilities that would make the wielder an absolute master of that Type. Most, if not all, Ruler Type abilities were - Limit 1 - abilities.

Kevin considered and Accepted the New ability. He wouldn’t necessarily need to use it now, but having it in his pocket seemed important.

Status: Name Kevin Moses

Points: 102,765

Race: Human

Soul Quality: ✪

Age: 35

Stats: Strength: 150

Endurance: 127

Recovery: 88

Soul: 31

Abilities: 6/8

Soul Tracker

Ki Cultivator Earth Tier (Middle)

Basic Shield Mastery (5/5)

Intermediate Axe Mastery (1/5)

Ceaseless Mind

Conqueror's Spoils (Uses Remaining: 1)

"Holy Shit I can have 8 now!" Kevin smiled at the significant progress he’d made in his improvements. There was nothing he hated more than wasting time, he was extremely glad his detour into the depths of this ship had been worthwhile, but it was time to get back to the surface and get to Katie. He went over and picked up the odd orb. It was bleeding white light from the crack that marred its otherwise perfect surface. Maybe he could figure out what it was later? Video games from before had taught Kevin that you never leave unique items like this behind. He stored it in his ring and started climbing back to the flight deck.