"Good morning, Chosen!"

"Morning." Adam said, then squinted, "You using your mystic? Because you're looking like the damn sun today."

"Why, thank you. I'm just in a good mood." Lucy said, raising a cheeky finger to her lips. "I suppose I just slept particularly well."

"Uh-huh…"

Dawn broke across the valley, dying the night skies with streaks of faint pink. Several townsfolk were already up, setting up their stalls or tending to their fields. Adam and his crew had chosen an early start, too. They had a lot of ground to cover over the next couple of days, according to his worst-case estimations. The Ram's Roach was their first stop for a quick breakfast. Eggs, potatoes and juice.

"Leaving already?" Jona said, "Pity. You did alright work out there, boy."

"Yeah, places to be and that." Adam said. "You've got troubles of your own, and I've got mine."

Jona made a non-committal sound. She nodded towards Penny, who had the misfortune of sitting next to Lucy today. Penny scraped her potatoes on the end of a plastic fork, the utensil trembling beneath Lucy's observant stare.

"You still taking the tyke, eh?"

"She's part of my group. What else could she do? Work here in the bar all day?"

"I wouldn't be opposed to that. She's got quick feet." Jona said, "Caught two bottles before they crashed to the ground and wasted some perfectly fine booze."

Her look then sharpened into a proper glare. The wrinkles in her cheeks stressed and Adam, despite only looking up, felt a small knot tie in his stomach. "You better be good to her, boy."

"Huh?" Adam said, glaring straight back, "What's it to you?"

"I'm looking out for a repeat customer. That a problem?"

"What, Penny your lost granddaughter or something?"

Jona patted the weapon attached to her belt. "I'm not so dried up that I've lost my sense of sympathy. 'Seen enough little brats and tykes get roughed up beneath these damned red skies in my time. Remember what I said yesterday? A lot of the causes were men."

"The hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Not much." Jona smirked, "Just be aware, boy, that word gets around faster than certain upstarts think."

He shoved his plate forward. Jona caught it before the upper half slid off the edge. She gave him a nasty chuckle and placed it in a nearby wash-trough. The remnants of his potatoes mixed with the water and floated to the top like dried leaves atop a swamp bog. He waited for Lucy to finish, then his group left the pub.

The cool morning air smelled of grass and chilled the inside of his mouth as he took a lungful. The town was a pleasant reprieve from the desolate quietness of the MOB, but it was time to move on. Trouble approached. Penny was wrong. As strong as Lucy was, he'd be a fool to pit her against an entire army of bandits. She was the type to prioritize his life over anyone in Glenn's Rest, regardless.

He checked the map Penny had purchased for him yesterday. It was not to scale, resembling more of a sketch than an actual detailed navigational tool. It was only good for determining the relative positioning of locations. The sooner they reached the beacon and made contact with Miriam, the better.

Red marks dotted the map, courtesy of Penny. The advantage of running with scavengers was she was up to date on rumors about Astraean technology. Somehow, clusters of technology had fallen off the MOB as it was transported to this world, crashing down into various locations like meteorites. Scavengers, merchants and other vagrants dedicated their entire careers to finding these technology caches. That was harder than they found, because the technology often attracted unusual phenomena, such as increased animal presence, spatial distortions or mass outbreaks of the red.

"Another reason why our technology shouldn't fall into the wrong hands, Chosen!" Lucy had said, when he told her, "Certain components don't gel well with nature, if not worked right. The plasma is running amok!"

Penny hadn't heard of anything resembling a signal beacon. The only option was to check each spot one by one. Adam hoped he wasn't wasting time. He couldn't care less if America got firebombed to bits—their incompetence had indirectly led to Mary's terrible home life—but he would be damned if he wasted all that navigation study during basic.

Cole let them through the town gates. He scarpered up the guard-tower before Adam could ask him anything. What a weirdo. Kid needed to have some self-awareness. At least he was committed to his job.

One of the fishermen was kind enough to lend them his boat as he went on his daily routine. They sailed with him down the river, then hopped out halfway as the split in the road came apparent.

"Good luck!" The old man called, as Adam hopped off the boat onto the sandy ground. His trawler was stuffed with rainbow-colored tuna, "Murk some of those bandits for me, sonny!"

"Everyone sure hates them, huh." Adam muttered, "Alright, let's get on with it."

The group kept a steady pace as they headed into the wilderness of Grassruin Valley. The first spot was a cave filled with rabid dogs. Their pelts were too disease ridden to be sold, so they immolated the lot and moved on. The second was a ditch containing a single empty suitcase. Penny, at least, knew the roads well. She got them to their destinations in quick succession, even pointing out shortcuts through some of the rough terrain. ADOSCH recorded the new locations on a gradually expanding map based on an image scan of his current one and assigned him some new experience.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Experience (Exploration) acknowledged: +15%

The third spot they visited, an hour before noon, was a cave system formed out of a collapsed building. An office block had somehow landed in the middle of nowhere and became buried in a landslide, its frame on a slight incline. Half a sign jutted out of the hardened rock, its text faded. The front door had collapsed inwards. A murky, dark tunnel awaited. Jagged rocks and gravel littered the front entrance, creating a wonky series of steps inwards.

He approached and felt his plasma synapses twist. It felt like nausea, except on a non-physical level. It made him want to toss a firebomb inside the hole instead of throwing up.

"Chosen, do you feel it?"

"Yeah, I do." As if on cue, a red glow pulsed at the back. The corruption was here. It explained the oversized flesh slime squirming a few yards away. Adam used it as a training dummy, pulling out all the bones from within via his mystic while Lucy pinned it down. The slime had then collapsed in a pile of foul-smelling slurry. He scanned the outside area and noticed bandit gear. Their weapons lay to the side: knives, rusted pistols, bombs. None of them were in good nick. Same evil cloud symbol, too. Some of Rick's friends hadn't listened to the radio, apparently. Their jeep rested at the base of a nearby tree.

Redspot was the term for these kinds of areas. The red accumulated over time, transforming any innocuous pit into a dungeon full of monsters and corruption.

"How bad is it?" Adam asked Lucy.

"The moment we enter, it'll surround us." Lucy said, "Chosen, your purification. Can you still use it?"

Adam held up Mary's pendant. He checked [IDENTITY_REDACTED]'s entry in ADOSCH's Mystic Core again. There was nothing regarding its activation conditions. He tried to remember how he wielded it against the Blast Witch. Best he could come up was that it happened by sheer coincidence.

He considered leaving this spot behind. It would take them a week to cross the whole of the valley. In theory, they had infinite time, but there was no way of predicting what they might encounter. If another Witch caught them while they were tired from exploration, it was lights out. And what if this cave contained the signal beacon in its depths?

"Guess we'll have to risk it." Adam said. "The goddess's power wanted you uncorrupted, so maybe it'll work this time?"

Lucy clenched her fist. A dark shadow overtook her expression as she stared into the maw of the tunnel. He could sympathize. The blue aura had guided him through her decorruption process, yet he still recognised that terrible imprint left behind by the red. It invaded past his physical senses and curled around the fabric of his being, like a slimy, rotten hand.

"Let me lead, Chosen." Lucy said, "If anything happens to me, and I become irrecoverable, you must flee at once. You must return to the MOB and safeguard yourself there. Operator Pereia will assist you."

"Got it." Adam said.

"I have faith that Her power will shield us, mind you. Those monsters didn't corrupt me when I found myself surrounded by them."

The two checked their gear. Rifle, check. Ammunition check. Tomahawk, knife, plasma and regenerative syringes, all check.

"Wait, we're actually going in there?" Penny asked.

"Course." Adam said, "What, you think we just walked all the way out here for a picnic?"

"Oh no. Oh, no no no." Penny said, "Boss, can we not do this? Because if it's other star-tech you need, I know a good merchant…"

"The hell's your game?" Adam said, taking on a dangerous tone.

"It's not worth it, boss!" Penny cried. "You saw what happened to the bandits. I won't come back out as a human if I go there."

He blinked. Oh, right. Penny was a normal human. He wasn't. He was a cyborg roided up with magic from a space colony and saw computer screens inside his head. It hadn't even been two weeks and somehow he'd forgotten he used to be a regular person. Could you blame him? As aggravating as Astraea's Goddess was, the augmentations and his new [Psychokinesis] were legit cool.

"Okay, you can stay out…" A thought occurred to him. "Hey, what's the guarantee that you won't scarper off?"

Penny froze. "Um…"

"You're not hoping that we both get whacked and leave you alone, Penny?"

"No! Definitely not! I swear on Granny's soul that my brain didn't go near that thought, boss!"

"You know, I purified that red from Lucy." He said. Would it work on a regular human? Was this be the chance to try it out?

"But…no, I can't! I don't want to! Please, trust me, boss! Once you absorb too much red, you can't go back! Everyone knows this!"

She was begging, almost prostrating, like the day he met her. Again, he wondered if she was genuine. She had followed him. She was terrified of Lucy, sure. Was that enough? What if she received a surge of bravery and tried to screw them over?

He had to admit, his chest twinged as he watched Penny cower. This wasn't fun. It wasn't like taunting a downed opponent, letting the bastard bask in the light of his fighting superiority.

"Chosen, may I have a word?" Lucy pulled him aside and whispered into her ear, "It may be prudent to agree to her requests for a bit. We don't want to create a monster of our own making."

"Bet you could kill that in an instant."

"No risk is better than little risk. I'm no expert in this world's culture, but I've noticed that my fellows stay put when you give them a proper reason to."

What would Mary do, he thought. She would…automatically trust him because he was her little brother. Okay, that was no good. What about the gang she and Sally used to run in? The dreaded Steeldale Eves, who packed stolen guns and kicked in enough teeth to bury the tooth fairy. When they performed a deal to a weaker party, they…

Ah, this could work.

"Hand over your stuff, Penny."

The young girl made a noise somewhere between a yelp and a cough.

"Money, gear, keepsakes. All of it." Adam said, pressing the matter harder, "You'll get them back when you return. If you run, you'll have nothing. This valley will chew you up and spit your bones out. Got that?"

"You're the boss, boss."

The girl undid the straps on her pack. He took her chips, her weapons, and her tools. His hands brushed over a small horse carving. He'd seen Penny clutch onto that, when she thought he wasn't looking. He left that behind. He didn't need more dead weight.

He also left her a knife, so that she wasn't completely defenseless. It wouldn't let her survive for extended periods of time. Penny bowed, mumbled her gratitude, and vanished into the bushes near the truck.

"Do you think it's down there?" Adam asked.

"I don't know. There's no indication." Lucy said, "It would be nice if it were."

"Like the treasure of a dragon." Except even that was more manageable than the red.

"You ever watched Number 4: The Silence, Chosen?"

"No, that a movie?"

"Yes, and it's great! It won so many awards last year. If we find it in the MOB, I'll show you. There's a cave exploration sequence in that too."

"How did it end?"

"Suboptimal? I'm hoping that we do better."

A pause.

"Ready, Chosen?"

"Yeah." Adam said.

Together, they descended into the maw of the cavern.