Roman charged down the battlements, a savage grin splitting his face. A goblin guard dangled from his outstretched right hand, fluttering in the air like a banner. His fingers completely encompassed its tiny head.

Another guard stared with wide eyes as Roman approached, trembling hard enough to rattle its rusted iron armor. Roman paused long enough to wind up and fling the one in his grasp. Bones snapped as the goblin’s neck whipped around, and a moment later its corpse struck its companion like a cannonball, flinging both off the wall in a tangle of shattered limbs.

Notifications flashed across his vision. Roman ignored them, continuing to thunder down the battlement.

He had cleared out his approximate area already, leaving a trail of pitiful corpses in his wake. Slaughtering the guards was pathetically easy, like he was rampaging through a daycare for monsters.

A quick glance revealed that the armored truck had come to a stop near the middle of the compound. The other Party had spread out in a tight perimeter, weapons at the ready. A few bloody smears marked the weak resistance they had faced so far.

Little figures scampered away from them, retreating into the buildings of the compound. One of them collapsed, a plume of blood bursting from their chest; an instant later the mounted Weatherby Mark V boomed out.

Too easy, Roman thought. The Flesh Guardian that he had faced would have annihilated the entire compound single-handedly. He held his position on the ramparts, using one hand to shield his eyes as he surveyed the landscape.

An alarm began to ring throughout the compound--a discordant, off-key blast like someone was blowing into a defective trumpet. Wincing, Roman shielded his ears from the clangor. Enhanced Perception had its downsides. He figured that his actual sense of hearing hadn’t actually improved much, only his ability to perceive sound, but the distinction made no real difference. The alarm was annoying as shit either way.

Roman perched on the rampart like a gargoyle, his forearms dangling off of his thighs. While he was curious about what trouble the alarm would bring, his real focus was on the other Party. How they worked together. Their capabilities. Their limits. He would do his share and fulfill his Mercenary Contract to the letter, but he planned on keeping an eye on his friends as much as his enemies.

He knew firsthand how lucrative it could be to break the rules. To kill other Players. Hell, even if he broke his Contract, it would probably lead to three new Assholes of the Blahblah trying to earn his Patronage, and a punishment that served equally as a blessing. The Watchers didn’t want heroism; they wanted entertainment.

The broad steel door of one of the compounds swung open. After a moment’s pause, a flood of monsters forced themselves through the exit, scrambling over one another in a frenzy.

More goblins, but these looked like they had been fused with spiders. They swarmed so closely together that it was difficult to determine how many limbs each one had. At least eight, spindly and multi-jointed, sheathed in dark chitin. Four sets of eyes glowed within their elongated faces.

To Roman’s surprise, Mary was the first to react. The older lady looked determined, focused, all signs of her drunken moping gone. A full-blown fireball materialized in front of her outstretched hand, rotating and swirling in place to pick up momentum. A second later, it whooshed forward, flares licking at the air like tentacles. It struck the front of the compound and exploded into a sea of flame that washed over the facade. The front wave of goblin-spiders disintegrated to ash, and the inferno surged deeper into the building, halting the monster tide for a brief moment.

Abigail followed up, lifting one of her hands high. Beside her stood her knee-high steel golem, as well as the Bella-golem; they had managed to fit the pieces together into the complete figure, but the construct demonstrated no signs of animation.

The steel golem, however, responded to her command. Reflecting the harsh glow of the surrounding flames, It flashed forward in a blur. It plunged through the inferno, its sword-like arms extended at its side. Roman could just make out its silhouette, whirling and chopping like a metal whirlwind, before it disappeared into the building.

He wondered what skills and abilities the golemancer used. The steel golem resisted the magical flames with ease, making him suspect she could confer immunities on them that surpassed the natural limits of their building materials.

Mary’s inferno died off soon enough, and she stumbled back into Alexander’s arms. He helped her to the ground with surprising care before moving to the vanguard of the group, greataxe at the ready.

While Roman was interested in watching more of their fight, he had work to do. More monstrosities poured out of a building off to their side. Two-headed ogres, colossal pillars of gnarled flesh that squeezed through the door, one after another. Some of them grasped brutal clubs or hunks of metal, others flexed fists the size of boulders.

None of the other Party noticed, too focused on the enemies directly in front of them. Sloppy.

Roman descended with [ Flash Step ], landing in front of the building. The backlash of air resistance from moving so far almost blasted him off his feet. He stumbled back a step before catching his balance. The ogres reacted to his appearance immediately, lurching forward to take advantage of his misstep.

Roman expanded [ Impose Will ] in a dense field directly in front of him, localizing the pressure as much as possible. The knees of the ogre in front buckled. Its companions pressed forward, clambering over the fallen. They forced themselves through the domain with mindless abandon. The crack of bones and gurgling screams from the trampled ogre did nothing to halt their advance.

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They were damn big, looming head and shoulders taller than him, but far too slow. Roman met them with a flurry of strikes, stomping at knees, crushing wind pipes, sweeping legs. They toppled around him like a forest of gray trees, their corpses forming small heaps around him.

Even if they had a greater mass than him, their strength made sense in proportion to their body. Roman had the benefit of the system, augmenting him past the boundaries of mere flesh and bone. He made a ruin of the monsters, chests caving in beneath his fists, skulls imploding.

At some point an albino ogre, a giant among giants, broke through the doorframe and lumbered forward in Roman’s direction. That one required some effort.

Roman had to [ Flash Step ] away from the descent of its titanic club, appearing behind the albino. The ground quaked from the impact of its strike, clods of earth flying from the small pit left in its wake. Roman grasped the albino’s lower back, flooding bronze energy into his hand. [ Chaos Touch ] transformed its lumbar spine into a spray of white lotus petals and tiny bronze coins. It collapsed to its knees. Roman grasped one of its heads in each hand and smashed them together; they burst open like overripe melons. Grimacing, he wiped the gore from his face and looked ahead to the next enemy.

Their mountain of corpses had forced him to backpedal, but his slaughter had caught the attention of the other Party by then.

Leo dashed past Roman, spear licking forward to skewer an ogre’s throat. Right behind that enemy, a head exploded in a spray of gore--and an instant later, the ogre’s other head burst open as well. At first, he thought it was Mixie firing the mounted rifle, then he caught a glimpse of Scott brandishing a large handgun--a 1911, maybe, carved from dark metal.

Roman made eye contact with him for a moment. He didn’t like what he saw in the man’s expression. Snarling, Scott tilted the handgun more in his direction.

Roman left the area with a [ Flash Step ], returning to the side of the armored truck. Mixie wasn’t inside, though the mounted rifle twisted about on its own, occasionally firing off a round into the fray.

His mind raced. Should he kill Scott? It would be hard to justify to the others. He didn’t even have proof the man intended to shoot him--only paranoid suspicions and the fact the man had pointed a weapon in his general direction. He had scolded Mixie over doing the same before, but it wasn’t enough of an excuse to kill one of the other Party. It was also a bit different, in this new world--if Scott was some sort of Gunslinger Class, then it was possible his supernatural aim made it impossible for him to harm his allies.

While the rational part of his mind argued with itself, a flicker of anger built up in his heart. His heartbeat was pounding in his ears, adrenaline coursing through his veins. With his new Berserker Quirk, he could lay waste to this entire region. Ascend to a whole other tier of power. Reach beyond level ten, evolve his Class, gain new abilities.

Roman shook his head, banishing the intrusive thoughts of savagery.

He located Mixie soon enough. The ghoul made no real effort to hide himself.

A loud whomp caught Roman’s attention. It was an eerie sound, like an underwater implosion, that Roman had heard once before: [ Nirvana Lotus ], the conjoined assault of Mixie’s elemental blades.

The side of the building that had spawned the flood of spider-goblins had been erased from existence. Opalescent energy flickered along the boundaries of the gargantuan hole that had consumed half of the edifice. A massive gouge had been plowed out from the earth, forming a trench that stretched halfway toward the next building.

Mixie stood in front of the devastating he had wrought, the elemental swords rotating about him like planets orbiting a star.

How much had Mixie leveled up? Roman remembered that technique from back when they fought the gashadokuro. It had taken a decent chunk out of the road, but not nearly to this extent. Had the ghoul been hiding its true power, or had it grown explosively in the past day? Roman wasn’t sure which he found more concerning.

Only a few more spider-goblins trickled out from the ruined building. Now that its facade had been exposed, Roman saw the entire building was empty, save for a dark stairwell leading deeper underground. That made sense. He had thought maybe the buildings had just spawned monsters indefinitely, but they must have surged upward from subterranean tunnels.

The remaining battlefront fell in short order as the other Party turned their attention to the two-headed ogres. Notifications flashed across Roman’s vision as he wandered across the field of corpses, finishing off the twitching remnants of the survivors. Most of it was free experience leeched off of the other Party.

He almost felt bad for them, but he and Mixie had handled their fair share of enemies. Some of the other Party had contributed little to nothing, such as Jessie and Noah.

The slick-haired lawyer in particular had caught Roman’s interest during the engagement. He was restraining himself, but whenever one of the monsters came close to his position near the back of the Party, he would do…something. The enemies would lose interest and throw themselves to their deaths. He wondered what kind of illusions the man was capable of conjuring, how realistic and immersive they were. Roman hated the idea of having his mind messed with.

The fight wrapped up soon enough.

Mixie cleared out the rest of the goblin-spider building after switching his eyes to rubies and scouring it with purifying blame, enhancing it with the power of the phoenix sword. Mary joined him in flinging explosive fire, and the two yammered together like gossiping old wives.

The final ogre fell after Alexander cleaved it down the middle, bifurcating its body between its heads. Finally, the alarm stopped blaring. Heavy silence descended over the area.

Both of the Parties gathered in a relatively clear area. Roman grimaced as his boots squelched through a pond of blood and gore. The area looked like it had been run through a meat-grinder, then blasted with flamethrowers for good measure. A huge chunk of ceiling broke off one of the buildings and smashed into the ground.

“Jesus,” Roman said to Mixie. “Dungeon cleared, then?”

Mixie’s ruby eyes glittered with amusement. “Of course not, Mister Miller. This was just the welcoming party. How do you feel about going underground?”