Lorelei found the sight of the abandoned M6 to be peculiarly affecting. Considering all that she had witnessed—and, in some cases, done—since the integration had begun, it said something that the thing that almost brought her to tears was a long, long line of abandoned cars.

There had obviously been some pretty spectacular crashes during those initial moments when the sky had ripped open, and those walls of text had appeared. Lorelei imagined that choosing your Class and negotiating travelling at 70 mph was probably pretty tricky.

She wondered how many of those millions of deaths in the initial periods of integration hadn't been down to humankind collectively losing its shit and going all murderhobo, but rather just plain 'old wrong place at the wrong time', common-or-garden bad luck. The irony of that almost brought a smile to her face. And then she started noting soft toys amongst the carnage and sobered up damn quickly.

The ding that announced another hour had passed interrupted her musings. As someone who had, very much, been a stickler for everything in her life having a time and a place, she was actually welcoming that noise. Considering the shambles around her, it was comforting to have a better handle on the passage of the hours.

Lorelei opened up her stat sheet and quickly scanned through her Skills to see what was the latest ability she had randomly stolen. "Shit," she muttered and then turned to shout at the rest of the group that was following in her wake. "New hour and I've just pulled something off a Level 10 mob. Anyone see anything out there?"

To be fair, Lorelei thought, as the party reacted quickly to her yell and fell into a decent defensive formation, everyone was starting to fill out into their roles quite nicely. Even her, she thought.

They'd all agreed it made good use of her most recently acquired Skill for Lorelei to act as the party's scout. In practice, this meant - once they'd worked out what her 'active' range actually was - her hovering a decent distance ahead of the rest of them when the Skill's cooldown was nearly up and using the ding as an opportunity to check what was out there.

"Kind of like radar," Kris had said, winking at her.

"Yeah, once-an-hour-can-flag-one-bad-guy-without-telling-us-where-to-look radar. Absolutely the best possible sort. I cannot imagine how the world possibly coped before," Hild had snarked. That relationship hadn't improved despite the gift of the Guide breaking chest piece.

There was the huff of laboured breathing behind her. "So, what skill did ye pick up, then?" Pete had jogged up to cover her, now there was no danger of her stealing any of his Skills.

Lorelei smiled as she looked at him as the Adamantine Sentinel was quite the sight. Anything their group had been able to loot that would help out their two ungeared tanks had been funnelled straight to Hild and Pete. However, it seemed the Valkyrie's build was far more flexible in what she could wear. The tall woman might not be looking quite as imposing as she had been before all her fancy gear was mushed in the Level 40 debacle, but it at least looked like she'd picked a style lane.

Pete . . . not so much.

"You doing okay, Pete?" Lorelei asked as the profusely sweating man removed a bucket with two eye holes punched in it from off his head. "That doesn't look all that comfortable."

"Divvent worry aboot me. It's aalreet. Got some canny stats on it, so ah can't complain. Anyway, ah haven't seen owt else ah can equip yet."

As Pete could only wear things—apart from his splendid new cotton shirt with +5 Stamina on it—that were designated for use by 'Heavy Tanks,' they had not been able to loot anything close to a matching set for him. He looked nothing so much like a walking jumble sale. With a grunt, he hefted his massive bastard sword up on his shoulder and scanned the long expanse of concrete littered with abandoned vehicles which lay before them.

"What Skill was it, like?" he asked again.

Lorelei brought up her stat screen and searched again for the newly added Skill. "," she replied, cursing - not for the first time - that without her Guide, there was no way to find out what it did without activating it.

"Lurk? That sounds like summat's ganna be lookin' to ambush us, then?," then a look of profound consternation came over his face. "Whe the hell did ye gan, lass?"

Smiling, Lorelei switched off and Pete's eyes focusing on her again. "Sorry, I just tried it out. It's some sort of invisibility Skill, I think."

"Bollocks. Just what we need. What d'ye reckon, get everyone together for a conflab?"

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Lorelei shook her head, looking ahead of the group for any sign of the creature that was awaiting them. In theory, should mean that the previous invisible creature was now very much corporeal. At least for the next thirteen minutes.

"I'm not sure we have the time. If I've stolen whatever is out there's stealth Skill, then we've got a little window of opportunity where we should be able to see it. I think we need to flush it out while it is visible." She turned and yelled across the silent roadway to their Necromancer. "Steffan?"

The young man glanced around in momentary confusion at hearing his name and then zeroed in on Lorelei. "What?"

Lorelei had hoped he might walk a bit closer so that they weren't bellowing their tactical discussion across a hundred yards of potentially hostile territory. However, as everyone was, understandably, a little leery of having their best Skills randomly stolen from them, she was learning to hold conversations at a higher volume than her previous experience.

"I've taken an invisibility Skill off something big and nasty in the near vicinity. We need to kill it before it can hide again," she shouted, hoping that whatever was out there did not have a command of the English language.

"Okay . . . What do you want from me?"

"I think this would be a good time for Operation Kamikaze Charge."

Understanding dawned in Steffan's eyes. Or, at least, Lorelei presumed it did. It was hard to read micro-expressions at such a distance. However, as he quickly directed his Zombie Cheerleaders into a line across both sides of the motorway and commanded them to run forward, she assumed he picked up what she was putting down.

"Everyone else needs to get ready for something to pop up. It'll be Level 10, so let's not fuck about with any heroics. Stick to the plan. We let Pete and Hild aggro it first before anyone else does any damage."

"Fuck's sake, we know what we're doing! Just concentrate on not killing any of us with any of your bullshit!" Hild yelled back, running to follow the scampering zombies.

Lorelei quickly checked that everyone else was ready for some action. Pete was shambling forward to support Hild, Zorrobar had a circling column of flame at his side, Kris's eyes were watchful for where some healing might be needed, Michelle and Michael had vanished, and Chrissy . . . .

A little more explanation might be required about what the Chameleon Courtesan was up to.

On their way out of the city centre, they had stumbled upon a fancy dress store which, it turned out, was somewhat of a goldmine for the stripper's Class. Right now, Chrissy was rocking a look that Lorelei was thinking of as 'Slutty Robin Hood'. All of this now meant that rather than a secondary Healer, their group appeared to have gained a sniper.

"You see anything, Chrissy?" Steffan shouted over to her. He was watching his little army clamber up and over burned-out cars and the various detritus that indicated all sorts of nasty shenanigans had taken place here in the very recent past. It looked like at least some of it was not due to vehicular collisions.

Chrissy shook her head and then vomited - sudden movement with the

They waited for a few more minutes, Lorelei watching the countdown on the stolen Skill tick downwards. She was just starting to have the sinking sensation that, in an entirely on-brand demonstration of lousy luck, the moment whatever was out there could become invisible again, they would stumble upon it, when Steffan shouted in outrage.

"Fucking hell, did you see that?"

All eyes swivelled to look at where, a few moments earlier, one of his Cheerleaders had been scaling an upturned Vauxhall Cavalier and the next . . .

"Come an' have a go if ye think yer hard enough!" bellowed Pete, charging forward to rugby tackle a massive spider that had exploded out from underneath the car. His taunt pulled the monster's attention away from the now-headless zombie, and it skittered forward to attack him, front legs raised high.

"What is it?" Lorelei yelled, acutely feeling the loss of her Guide. She would put up with any amount of misogynistic chit-chat if it meant she could go back to having access to some basic information.

"Shadowweaver Arachnis," Kris shouted back, casting beneath Pete's feet just as the big man was pierced by two of the monster's legs and lifted off the ground. The Tank was battering it on the head with his sword but was making little impact.

With two soft pops, Michael and Michelle appeared, leaping, in the air behind the spider, driving their twin knives deep into its carapace and then vanishing again into dark portals. Zorrobar thrust his pillar of flame forward, skilfully weaving it around Steffan's swarming zombies. The instant the fire touched the Shadowweaver Arachnis, it unleashed a piercing scream and dropped Pete to the floor. The big man shook himself off, bellowed his taunt anew, and charged, headbutting the spider squarely in the head.

"The first time I saw him do that, I assumed he had a Skill for it," Kris murmured, having moved to stand next to Lorelei.

"And he doesn't?" Lorelei tried to concentrate on the fight, whilst ignoring her desire to take a step even closer to the healer.

"Not as far as I can tell. I think he just likes doing it. I don't even think it does very much damage. At least, not to whatever he's fighting. I've levelled up twice, just through repairing his forehead."

Hild had positioned herself on the other side of the spider now and was alternating her taunt - "By Odin's sweaty ball sack!" - with Pete's, disorientating the creature, which kept scuttling around to face whichever of the tanks was seeking its attention.

Even though the Shadowweaver Arachnis substantially out levelled each of them individually, the group was getting better at co-ordinating its fights. And, with having Chrissy adding some extra DPS via some pretty explosive quarrels, it was all over well before the spider had its skill returned to it. Hild finished it off with a crashing downward strike with her axe, splitting the creature in two.

"Well, I think that went about as well as we could have hoped . . ." Kris began.

Which was exactly the right moment for the three other Level 10 Shadowweaver Arachnis - ones whose Skill was still very much available - to introduce themselves to proceedings.