After a minute of riding over the plateau of autumnal foliage, Mixie swerved the pickup truck back onto the road. Roman settled back, thankful that the bumpy ride transitioned into a slightly more comfortable cruise. Wind scoured his face as they sped along.

With the ghoulish shopkeeper behind the wheel, they seemed to fly across the asphalt, faster and more controlled than the ancient truck had any right to move. Roman decided not to question it, slinging one arm over the edge of the bed and tapping the side of the rusted frame.

Despite his nonchalance, he scanned the distance with [ Hunter’s Eye ], half-expecting some eldritch horror to swoop out of the sky and snatch him up. Nothing caught his attention, though he refused to fully relax.

It was almost a relief when, after another minute of the pickup truck devouring the distance, another vehicle came into view: an older Jeep Wrangler, flipped onto its soft-top on the shoulder of the road.

Mixie parked beside it without any prompting. Roman hopped out of the bed of the truck, fingers itching in anticipation of a fight. He crouched atop a crunchy layer of broken glass, peering into the interior. Nothing inside except for a few scattered papers and an empty styrofoam cup.

A trail of bloody slime led from the driver window into the knee-high grass. Roman followed it for a dozen paces before coming across the shriveled husk of a carrion golem. Little more than a skeleton remained, its organic matter forming a congealed pool beneath it. A halo of offal surrounded the protruding nub of its neck bones.

John materialized at Roman’s side. “Basic creatures like this will break down when exposed to the sun for long enough. This one must’ve been too damaged from the accident to find shelter.”

“Why?” said Roman.

John paused for a moment. “What do you mean?”

“Why does the sun damage them? It’s a ball of, what, hydrogen and helium, millions of miles away. Is it ultraviolet light itself or what?”

John shrugged. “Magic, I guess. The real answer is that it lowers the running cost of the Chaos Playground. There’s some entropic loss whenever matter or energy are converted to sustain the system. By imposing this weakness, that means that the created monsters only have to be empowered half the time. It extends the Playground, and also gives Players a respite so they don’t all burn away in the first week. So, long story short, I doubt you could exploit the weakness outside of the designated times.”

At the end of John’s explanation, the carrion golem twitched.

Just a reflex, probably.

It twitched again.

Roman planted a heel against its sternum and applied steadily increasing pressure, testing his own strength. Bone crunched underfoot.

[ Carol Williams defeated. 50 experience awarded. Harvest organic fragments? ]

Not much experience, but Roman hadn’t done much to deserve it in the first place. Part of him wanted to bury this lost soul as well, but it seemed difficult to justify. He couldn’t lay every corpse he came across to rest. If he spent too much time digging graves, he’d be joining them sooner rather than later.

The gesture was probably meaningless anyways. Roman had never been much of a religious person, and especially now the idea of some benevolent creator waiting for someone to act out the proper rites seemed absurd.

Just in case, he muttered a quick prayer under his breath before returning to the back of the pickup.

Once they set off again in a cloud of black exhaust, Roman found that his mood had worsened even more. He made a vague attempt at closing his eyes and meditating, attempting to visualize the bronze power circulating through his body. John had called it mana, though Roman preferred soul energy himself.

Trying to clear his mind only resulted in more intrusive thoughts. At best he could summon a vague mental image from memory of what his spiritual circulatory system should look like. In past fights, the knowledge had been at his literal fingertips, and the perception of energy flowing through his body had almost felt like a sixth sense. He could overload his hands or his eyes with soul energy to enhance localized abilities.

[ Hunter’s Eye ] flickered on and off with a thought, which made him think there was a difference between Quirks and Skills. Without the impetus of combat, he couldn’t feel the energy suffusing his eyes when he activated the Perception Quirk.

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Likewise he had noticed another discrepancy: assigning attribute points from leveling caused him discomfort, but enhancements from Nodes and items caused no visceral response. Was there a reason behind any of this? Random choices by Sul’gurrath?

He thought about asking John, but they were veritably hauling ass down the road, and the wind would steal any of his words away.

In that weird vision he had when entering the Chaos Gate, one of the eldritch detectives had complained about something at the end. Hate when this sort of shit happens. ‘Look at me, I’m unlocking a new ability in order to overcome a life-threatening situation.’ Which asshole enabled this Tenet?

Roman remembered those first messages from the system clearly. They had mentioned Tenets as well. [ Dimensional Merge, These Violent Delights, Pseudo-Immortal Hubris, Dense Through Death, Chaos Gates, and Entropic Evolution. ] One of these must have made it easier for someone like him to hone themselves through combat, opposed to being some monk pondering the mysteries of the universe. These Violent Delights or Entropic Evolution, maybe?

The clarity of his memory made him pause. He had never been the best student, though he had always preferred to think of himself as more disinterested than dumb. But he could feel himself becoming more than he used to be, his attributes enhanced far beyond human limits. None of them seemed to make him into a genius, like some specific Intelligence stat, but he had to imagine Will and Perception at least had some effect on his mental faculties, such as memory.

At what point, he thought, am I no longer Roman? When have I become someone completely different from the person I used to be?

He stared up, [ Hunter’s Eye ] activated, entranced by the gentle skies. He wanted to remain Roman Miller, even if that identity sometimes meant shame, or mistakes, or stupidity on his end. Maybe at some point he would ascend into this resplendent deity capable of altering reality itself, but he didn’t want to forget who he was at heart. Death seemed more likely, anyways.

Thoughts and speculations whirled about in his mind--a familiar chaos.

After a couple of minutes, a strange building came into view in the distance, tearing Roman away from his reverie. It looked mostly like a pagoda made from gray steel, the edges of its tiered floors gleaming bright as blades. Thirteen levels to it. An inauspicious number.

As they drew closer, it became evident that the spire on top of the pagoda was, in fact, the barrel of a cannon pointed up at the heavens.

Roman knew this because he watched dumbly as it bent downward, pointing its abyssal maw directly at them. His cheeks rippled and his robes whipped at the air as the truck accelerated even faster, threatening to dislodge him from the back of the vehicle. He gripped the side with all of his strength, prepared to [ Flash Step ] away at the first sign of--

Flames erupted from the cannon, flaring bright enough to turn the skies into a sheet of blinding white. An instant later, before Roman could even react, a stone shell blossomed into existence around the truck, completely blocking them out from the rest of the world. Explosive concussions rocked the thick earthen barrier, but nothing penetrated through.

The force of the impact knocked the truck off course. It swerved frantically--perhaps a little too frantically, as if Mixie actually did want to dislodge his passenger. The stone barrier vanished as if it had never existed.

Smoke drifted up from dozens of small craters burrowed into the ground around them. Holy shit, what does that cannon shoot?

Shifting by degrees to follow their erratic course, the cannon continued to track them.

The truck drifted off road at something like 150 mph, far faster than the rust bucket had ever dreamt of going during its long life.

Roman took the hint and activated [ Flash Step ] before the shuddering vehicle threw him off. He landed on the road, then an instant later the backlash of air resistance blasted him off his feet like a ragdoll anyways. He tumbled through the air, remaining oriented due to his [ Dancer’s Grace ] Quirk, though it only made his nausea worse as his mind struggled to make sense of the blurry world.

He landed on all fours like a cat, the asphalt skinning the palms from his hands as he skidded to a stop. Shaking his head, he watched the truck tear through the grass, weaving its way in the direction of the pagoda.

Then he realized the cannon wasn’t following the truck; it was still pointing at him.

His breath caught in his throat as the cannon flared once more. [ Flash Step ] carried him down the street, a hundred paces towards the pagoda. Missiles whistled overhead and exploded into the ground behind him, throwing up plumes of earth and concrete. Ears ringing, he continued forward in a series of [ Flash Steps ], one after another, absorbing the backlash with gritted teeth. Blood trickled from his nose.

Still, his plan seemed to have some merit. As Roman closed in on the pagoda, the cannon on its roof could no longer point down at him directly. He sighed with relief as the massive barrel gave up on tracking him, returning to its scrutiny of the heavens.

He bent over, hands on his knees, panting as if he had just sprinted a marathon. Now that he was close to the entrance, he saw a sign dangling from the first tier. It had the same design as a skull-and-crossbones pirate flag, except it was a head in a steel helmet resting atop an interlocking sword and rifle. The engraved text read:

Keeper CCL’s Weapon and Armor Emporium

Great, thought Roman. Another one of these assholes.