[Level up!]

[1 skill point received. 250 coins received. Mana refilled.]

[Due to Trial Runner, your stat point has been automatically assigned.]

“Hell,” Waylan said. “This is taking too long.”

Over the course of the last twelve hours, Will had managed to get a total of five hours of sleep in two fitful segments, waking up at every sound. Waylan had slept some as well, though his sleeping form looked a lot like his waking one.

They’d cleared the office almost entirely from top to bottom. Over the course of that time, Will had cycled out his cards, keeping his deck between one to three cards so he’d consistently get the same ones when drawing. It did come with the downside of having to wait for a few seconds every time he ran out of cards for the deck to reshuffle, but that was what Waylan and the baseball bat were for.

While floor five had featured geese, the next one up was spiders again, which were surprisingly vulnerable to Web. Floor seven had proven to be tricky at first, with golems made of trash and broken serverracks, but Will had quickly figured out that Resonance Wave disrupted them at the very core, tearing them apart. From there, the rest of the floors had been relatively simple to clear.

After all was said and done, he’d actually managed to advance quite a few of his spells. Magic Missile made it to level 4, while he used Resonance Wave and Web enough to get them to level 3. Jump, Hex, and Blur advanced to level 2, and the remainder of Will’s cards either hadn’t been necessary for his plan or couldn’t advance thanks to their Meta status.

Will had advanced to level 4 quickly, at which point he’d been rewarded 250 coins rather than the 500 previous. Will suspected that was something of a beginner’s bonus starting to drop off. He would have to be wary about relying on level-ups for coins in the future.

After level 4, though, it’d been slow going. They’d gotten stronger and stronger, and the monsters they were killing just weren’t powerful enough to give them much experience. Twelve—technically seven—long hours of grinding had only gotten the pair to level 6.

With over 2000 coins and 4 available skill points, Will was feeling better about their chances. Still, even at this level, they were literally a quarter of the level of the monster underneath them.

Time was almost up. One way or another, things would be over soon.

Also, four skill points meant that he could finally upgrade the skill his class relied on.

Draw advanced to level 2.

Maximum hand size increased to 2. Maximum cards drawn at once increased to 2.

“Yes!” Will shouted, pumping a fist.

“I got my Inventory up,” Waylan said. “This fucker’s never gonna see us coming.”

Will could only hope that was true.

Most of their plans hinged on being able to use a level 2 Draw, and Will was glad to see that it had the same effect he’d assumed it would.

“Are you ready?” Will asked.

He and Waylan sat on the office’s roof, enjoying the late morning breeze. In order to save their coins, Will had scrounged up a couple of meals for them from the third floor’s pantry. As it turned out, the end of the world came with its benefits—nobody even tried to charge them for the food. Heat Metal wasn’t useful for combat yet, but it worked to boil some instant ramen quite nicely.

“Mmmmph,” Waylan replied, slurping up another mouthful of artificially-flavored noodles. “You humans’ve been holding out on us.”

“I’m not going to ask again. You ready?”

“Yeah, one second,” Waylan said, pecking at the last of his spicy lunch. “Ready.”

“Alright.” Will finished his meal, then sighed, tossing the paper bowl aside. Littering, too, was a new addition to the list of things he could do without anyone chastising him for it. “This is going to be tricky.”

There were no functioning elevators. After the Integration began, it seemed that more complex electronics stopped working properly, which also meant that the computers weren’t working properly. That made this next part more difficult, but they had the raw firepower to overcome it. Hopefully.

The first floor was even more of a mess now than it had been earlier. Corporate had decided that this place looked nice with floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and half of them were shattered now, giving the snake room to slither in and out of the destruction it’d wrought. Scattered monster corpses lay amongst the wreckage. The smell was horrendous.

Not a single part of the snake’s body was actually inside this building—it was coiled around the outside right now, sticking its head into the next office over. That made this both easier and harder.

For the first part, it was a godsend.

“Go, go, go,” Will urged.

Waylan was already on it, flying from point to point. Every time he got close to a piece of ceiling or a pillar they’d identified as probably load-bearing, he activated his Inventory skill, depositing an unassuming red cube with tiny text scrawled over it.

Apparently, the crow’s shop offerered a lot more than Will’s did.

Speaking of which, they weren’t going to have a lot of time to access said shop when they were in combat, and they weren’t going to earn any more coins before fighting the snake, so Will made his final pre-fight purchases.

You have bought 5 Basic Health Potions.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

You have bought 5 Basic Mana Potions.

It cost a thousand coins, but better safe than sorry, right? He still had a thousand coins left, too. Without an inventory to store them in, he had to stick them into his briefcase alongside his nonmagical deckboxes. It was a bit of a hassle to both carry the case and his trusty, blood-coated baseball bat, but Will knew that gearing up was more important than comfort in a time like this.

Will: How many more charges?

Waylan: Three. I don’t know which way it’s gonna fall, but it’s definitely gonna come down. Can you bait that fucker in here?

Will: Yeah, whatever. Let’s do this.

In all the novels and films and shows, it was the brash, bold moves that got rewarded. Will hoped it was the same here. If someone was watching, he hoped they were taking note of his idiocy. At least they’d remember him if he died.

He took a deep breath and ran towards the faint silhouette of the Earth Serpent, throwing caution to the wind as he leapfrogged over the detritus of a now-unrecognizable office floor. He whispered a silent thanks to whoever had made his office shoes. Though they were massively uncomfortable to run in, they crunched the shattered pieces of the windows to bits rather than let them pierce into Will’s skin.

Far too soon, he caught sight of their enemy.

[Earth Serpent [F] - lvl 25]

It had leveled up once since the last time he’d seen it. Scary. Will wasn’t sure if it had actually gotten bigger or if he was just imagining things, but the monster’s presence loomed over him more now than it had before.

When he’d been eight years old, his dad had taken Will to a museum of natural history. Back then, he’d stared up into the skeleton of what he would eventually learn was called an Argentinosaurus. With a length of over forty meters, the bones had awed him, sending his imagination running wild. Will had wondered what he’d feel if he’d gotten to see one of those behemoths in real life, his breath taken away by the prospect. He hadn’t even noticed when his dad left to meet up with a co-worker, forgetting that Will was even there.

Well, now he had the answer to that. The snake wasn’t quite forty meters, he was sure, but it was long as fuck. How did he feel about it?

Excited, sort of. Even if the circumstances were bad, even if his life was on the line here, this was a dream come true. This was the cessation of the mundane and the beginning of the fantasies that he’d retreated into for years. What kid hadn’t thought about fighting monsters with the help of untold magical powers?

He was pretty sure that he was supposed to be scared or something. Will searched within him for any emotions, but apart from the spark of excitement, he found a vast, gaping mass of nothing.

Burnout must’ve hit me hard. I wonder what a therapist would say.

Waylan: Earth to William. The charges are set. I’m about to skedaddle. You wanna do something instead of just staring at it?

Will: I got it.

“Draw,” he said out loud, placing his briefcase down at his feet.

Two cards appeared in his hand. One of them depicted an eye staring through a spyhole. Peek. The other felt like misery and malintent, even without Will looking at it. Hex.

He cast Peek first. This was still within their plans—since the snake hadn’t actually noticed him yet, he had enough time to sort through his cards until he found something useful. Peek would help speed that up in case it decided to end its search through the other office building sooner than expected.

Two cards appeared in his mind’s eye—Magic Missile and Resonance Wave. For this plan to have the highest chance at succeeding, he needed the latter, so he selected it. It appeared in his hand, and a line of text informed Will that he had the option of placing Magic Missile at the bottom of his deck or in the discard pile. He chose to keep it in, since it was one of only two remaining offensive spells in his deck right now.

With that set, Will reached down into his suitcase. Experimentation had revealed that he didn’t actually need a hand free to use his cards. If both were occupied, he would be able to have them hover in space near them, though it was a bit harder to use them that way. Right now, he needed to use both his hands, so he let the cards hover for a second as he found the item he was looking for.

A baseball.

Will focused his mind into the card that weighed on his hand like it was a consience, and he pushed magic out from his body into the card, burning 4 mana in an instant.

Hex, Will willed, and the card in question dissipated into dark smoke that ballooned out from his hands. The smoke, too, dissolved rapidly.

It reformed above the serpent’s head for a heartbeat, forming the image of a skull before enveloping the monster, sinking straight into it.

Will tossed the ball up high into the air, hoping his increased Dexterity stat would help him out here, and he gripped his bat with both hands.

He swung with all his might—and for his efforts, he was rewarded with a solid, meaty thwack. The ball arced towards the snake’s scales at speeds that would’ve broken a Little League outfielder’s arm, and it smacked straight into the monster.

It was as if he’d tried to turn the tide of a wave with a thrown stone. A single scale bent out of shape where it landed. No bone broke. He hadn’t even drawn blood.

But that was fine, because the snake’s screaming hiss was so loud that everyone within a mile had to have heard it.

Faster than should have been possible, the snake’s head twisted to look at Will, pure murder in its eyes. The effect was somewhat diminished by the fact that the head was still a solid eighty feet away. And covered in concrete.

Will turned around, picked up his briefcase, and ran.

Will: I pissed it off. Get ready.

Waylan: Been ready since you were born.

Will: I’m older than you.

Waylan: Shut up.

He sprinted, grateful that he’d decided to start hitting the gym again in the past few months. There’d been a period of time where he definitely wouldn’t have been able to handle even a hundred meter run, but the combination of his increased fitness and the pure adrenaline running through his veins gave him enough strength to keep up a solid pace as he practically dove back into the ruins of the first floor.

“Get, hah, out!” Will shouted, panting. In shape though he might be, holding a conversation while running was not his strong suit.

Waylan listened, flapping his wings and flying straight out as Will navigated his way over the mess on the first floor. It was like a tornado had gone through this place.

Draw, he thought, not bothering to look at the new cards he received. Since multi-card draws were going to be on a cooldown, he wanted to use single draws to replenish his hand as frequently as possible.

An earth-shattering crash behind him informed him that the Earth Serpent had broken free of the other building and was now chasing him in full force. Will chanced a single glance backwards to see the massive, scaly head slithering straight towards him, its long forked tongue flicking in and out with the promise of a brutal death.

Even now, he couldn’t come close to outrunning something that big.

But he didn’t need to. Will had a huge head start on the thing’s head, and the rest of its body wasn’t in a position to stop him. Plus, he knew the office layout like the back of his hand even if half of that map no longer applied.

It came closer than he’d hoped. By the time he made it through the other side, he could feel the snake’s spittle against his back, hear the forked tongue slicing through the air only a few feet behind him.

When the other, also broken, end of the building came withing reach, Will dove through the glass, accidentally cutting himself on it, and cast Resonance Wave.

Will: Do it now.

As he dove, he twisted in the air, looking back at the office building he’d wasted so many years in. It was nothing like it had been now. The system apo—the end of the world had brought devastation to it.

Will couldn’t be happier.

Okay, he could, but only if he’d taken his paid vacation days before this.

His target was one of the few pillars he knew for a fact was load-bearing. Two years ago, they’d had a scare when someone had driven a car straight through the side of the building. For three weeks, he’d had to work at a different office while they repaired this one.

It had been replaced on the lowest budget possible, and Resonance Wave had gotten stronger.

The pillar rumbled and shook, and it began to break.

Will flipped the snake off, giving his former place of employment one last fuck-you to go with it.

And then Waylan’s pre-placed explosives went off, turning Will’s world into fire and light.