Logan paced the corridor, glancing from the swarm of rats down below to the balconies up above. Shoot followed on his heels like a dog trailing its owner, her thorns clicking against the floor.

Logan looked at the upper floor and hesitated. Ernie could stay in his pouch and travel with Logan, but Shoot had no way to jump that high. If he used his Pink Sock, he’d have to leave her here, vulnerable. He could tell her to stay, not say anything, not move, but he didn’t have expectations that her discipline was that high. After all, she was essentially a child.

But he might have a solution.

“Shoot,” he whispered, crouching and giving her a firm look from behind his facemask. “Stay here. I need you to be quiet. Don’t move and wait for me. I shouldn’t be more than a minute.”

Hopefully.

Shoot wagged her tail, bobbing her head. “I’ll stay, mother!” she chirped.

Too loud. Logan winced and gave the rats down below a wary look.

“Back up into the end of the corridor and keep to the side of the wall.”

Shoot obeyed and darted to the end of the hallway.

The chances of foot traffic at the end of the hallway were much lower than if she remained closer to the elevator. As long as Logan didn’t take too long, she should be fine.

“All right, Ernie. Let’s go.”

“Let’s go flying!”

Using his pink sock-clad foot, Logan launched himself into the air as if he’d stepped on a jet engine, his talons out and ready to scramble for purchase. Normally, flying gave him a hell of a rush, shouting in euphoria, but this time, he made sure to bite his lip and hold in any sounds that could give them away.

Logan might have overshot, since he’d leaped right past the first corridor and had gone on to the next. Scrambling, he slammed his talons into the wall, but unlike scaling the apartment buildings in the street, the wall was stone. His talons were strong enough that they scratched the wall, scraped it, made too much noise, but Logan was forced to let himself slide rather than climb.

Huh.

It was a good thing he’d overshot, since instead of falling back to his original corridor, he could drop onto the next. Logan latched onto the edge of the overhang, his feet dangling, then pulled himself up. Despite the difficulty of the maneuver, he wasn’t out of breath; it had hardly been an effort at all.

“We made it,” he said to Ernie as he got to his feet and looked around.

The hallway was empty. It looked the same as the last, with an elevator on the side, and…

Wait a minute.

Two large, immense stone doors blended in with the stone wall. They were so tall they were double Logan’s height, bulbs on either end emitting light like dancing fireflies. Carvings like the weave of a basket decorated each door. Monsters with slithering tongues, wings aloft, interrupted the weaving. Frozen in flight, the wings bulged from the door.

Logan gave the door a dark look. The monsters looked distinctly like rats, rats on steroids. He didn’t like to think that a rat could grow wings, but if the snakes could do the same, anything was possible.

Logan had to blink and rub his eyes—for a second, there was a blurry shape around the edges… as if the doors themselves emitted an aura of their own.

Resting his hand on the door latch, Logan hesitated and then deployed [Life Fabricator]. He could sense Ernie on his shoulder and the mass of life that represented the rat army below, but beyond the stone doors, it was as if he’d hit a wall.

His skill wouldn’t go past them.

Holy shit. Logan shifted, trepidation making his heart race. As far as he’d been concerned, [Life Fabricator] was the shit. An epic skill, it shouldn’t have had limitations. This was his first indication that the skill might have limits. And more troubling, that implied that someone could have a skill that could rival his own.

Logan didn’t like this.

But time was wasting, and standing here wasn’t getting him closer to finding Lara or getting back to Shoot.

Grinding his teeth, Logan pushed the door open, trying to be quiet and stealthy.

As soon as he saw what was on the other side, his stomach dropped like a stone in shock.

Ernie had scooted out of his pouch and was gazing around them with his mouth gaping open. “What… what. It’s… No,” he breathed.

In front of them was a wall-to-wall aquarium, a mass of water held back by transparent glass. But unlike in a normal aquarium, this one was separated into square sections. It was as if someone had created a tank the size of a two-storey building and stacked square boxes on top of each other, creating an endless row of… well, cells.

Each square box was full of water, with a latch on the outside.

And inside…

Logan’s heart ached in sympathy, knowing that Ernie must be going through unmanageable pain.

Each square housed an octopus.

“No, no, no! NO!” Ernie wailed in his mental voice. “My brethren, my brethren! What are they doing to my brethren!”

There had to be thousands stuck in these cells. Each one was different, from Ernie’s size to the size of a giant pacific octopus, colors fluctuating from orange to purple. The larger octopus barely fit in the cell, reminding Logan of a stuffed animal crammed inside of a box. Their tentacles were limp, stuck to the glass bottom of their cells, their eyes dull and defeated.

Ernie jumped off his shoulder and scrambled onto the floor, turning off his mirror effect and turning his pale Liche color before darting for the nearest box and pressing a tentacle against the glass.

“Brother? Can you hear me?” he said out loud.

The other octopus blinked, but it was a regular blink, dull and sightless. It took no notice of Ernie and continued to slump in defeat.

Ah, man. Logan might have just found these ‘Sky People’ after all. And the endless cells weren’t filling him with confidence that this wasn’t what he thought it was, a factory for skill rings. They were keeping the octopuses segregated so they couldn’t work together. Ready for harvest.

“What is this, Logan?” Ernie cried, his black eyes damp with emotion. “What are they doing with my brethren? What do rats need with my kind!”

Logan swallowed, guilt eating at him as he shifted in place. Ernie wouldn’t be happy when he learned that Logan had known the answer all along. “They’re killing them,” he said. “Killing them for skill rings.”

Ernie twitched one of his tentacles. “What?” he whispered.

With a blink, Logan willed out the skill ring he’d taken from Pied’s agent, Peter. The garish ring glinted from the palm of his exoskeleton glove, emitting an aura that made the hair on the back of his neck rise.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

After his experiences with the clone ring, he swallowed acid just looking at the thing. The ring wasn’t just a skill ring, it had part of the animal who died in its aura.

Logan had forgotten about Peter’s ring in the rush and the fight with the rats. He’d always been a packrat, someone who accumulated crap just in case he needed it in the future. Once he obtained access to the System market, it was possible that he could sell the ring for a profit, but could he? If his stomach rebelled at the sight of it, how could he sell it to another person?

He doubted the ring would trigger XP sickness—battle wasn’t its purpose—but that wasn’t to say that there wasn’t another catch 22 with this thing. And worse yet, what if he sold it to someone innocent? Someone like Lara? It would be like selling a blood diamond ring that cursed your finger into turning black and falling off.

Logan ran his thumb over the edge of the metal. “This used to be an animal.” There was no use holding back. Ernie needed to know everything. “The Sky People are abducting evolved animals, animals with rare skills, then boiling them alive and converting them to skill rings.”

“…What.” Ernie quivered, looking from the octopus behind the glass to Logan. “And you knew about this?” His voice was accusing.

Logan winced. “Not for long. Just since the trial dungeon.”

Ernie seemed to grow smaller, his eyes full of betrayal. “You kept it from me.”

“I only wanted to protect you.”

“Protect me. Protect Ernie, who rivals all? Oh, I see now, you don’t think I rival all! You think I’m a weakling, someone who doesn’t deserve a throne, someone who won’t rule the world. Someone who—”

Logan crushed the ring between his thumb and finger until it exploded with a percussion noise, shards going flying. One shard slammed into one of the glass cells, crackling the glass like a spider web. Dissolving his face mask, Logan crouched so Ernie could see his expression and then dipped his head. “I’m sorry, Ernie.”

For once, Ernie seemed thrown. “You’re sorry?”

“I assumed after I’d escaped the trial dungeon that I knew what I was doing, that I was doing what was right. I think all that leveling and my world ranking went to my head. I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have kept the information from you. You do rival all, after all. If you’d learned something similar about Lara, I would have wanted to know.” Logan swallowed. “Please forgive me.”

Ernie huffed and averted his gaze, color blooming on his face. “Well!” Then puffing his cheeks, he turned back to Logan and gave him a glare. “It’s only right!” he exclaimed, pointing one of his tentacles. “Bonded companions do not hold back vital intel! Bonded companions share!”

Logan winced.

Ernie hesitated. “But I suppose I can accept your apology! Just this once, mind! And in return…” Ernie’s eyes grew bottomless and the horns on top of his head jumped up and down. “You will help me with the jailbreak.”

Aw, fuck.

***

Talking Ernie down from a full-scale prison break took way too long, time that Lara and Shoot didn’t have.

“You know I’m right,” said Logan. “We have one distinct advantage. We haven’t been detected. But once I start tearing these cages apart, there goes our subterfuge. I’m not saying we won’t do it, but we need to be smart here. Find Lara and the kids, then rain down a hailstorm of pain. A pummeling they won’t forget.”

And yet, Logan would like to know who he would be pummeling. Other than the man in front of the portal, he hadn’t seen any other people. The room was full of octopuses, but no one else was here. It was as if the place was a prison without guards.

Ernie gave the imprisoned octopuses a torn, anguish-filled look, his eyes wide and bottomless. Despite his talk of ‘brethren,’ Logan doubted that any of these octopuses were related to Ernie, but he still had a degree of empathy that made him Ernie. It was killing the poor bugger to leave them here, but at least they weren’t going through torture. They were stuck inside small tanks, with no stimulation, but for now, they weren’t in boiling water. The sky people had stored them here for a reason, it was just a matter of why.

Either way, Logan saw no reason that he couldn’t send down the elevator for Shoot. He’d yet to encounter anyone, so the invisibility issue was moot. “Come on, Ernie,” he said, holding out his arm for Ernie to jump onto it.

He did so with a last, lingering look at the other octopuses. “We must be speedy, Logan, we must rush like nothing else. We will triumph and rescue my brethren, yes?”

Logan nodded as he reformed his facemask and made sure his mirror effect was active.

Ernie got a second wind, twitching before crawling back into his pouch, mumbling, “Yes yes yes. We will kill the sky people and teach them a lesson they won’t soon forget. We will chop off their limbs and drown them in their own entrails. They will regret ever crossing my brethren, for I rival all and—”

Logan swung the door open and then stopped, staring.

Well, that answered that question. The place wasn’t deserted after all.

In front of him, two people were streaming past the hallway, their heels clicking against the stone floor, attention focused on where they were going, but when Logan opened the door, they came to a stop, staring in surprise. He was still invisible, but a door opening on its own would have to look odd.

Logan froze, barely breathing, and scanned them with [Idiot’s Inspect]:

[Ryan Clements: Level 60. A human being.]

[Highest Stat: Intelligence. Characteristics: Even tempered and full of analytical calculation. Hidden name: Ryan.]

[Amy West: Level 55. A human being.]

[Highest Stat: Strength. Characteristics: Quick to anger. Hidden name: Storm.]

The man was in his late twenties, tall and willowy, his eyes ice blue and intelligent. He had a scar on his chin that went from his mouth to the base of his neck, something that must have happened before the integration, since everything healed with a high enough constitution attribute.

The woman was older, with grey interspersed in her short hair, lines weathered around her mouth, her lips pinched as she stared at the open door.

Logan felt his nerves surge, every breath that much closer to discovery. These people would hardly challenge him—he was convinced he would overpower them if needed, but as soon as he did, the jig would be up, and Logan would have to discover what happened to Lara by force.

The woman looked in Logan’s direction, but then gazed past him and into the room with a frown.

She hadn’t seen him.

But the man… he looked directly at Logan, his mouth curling. “Well, hello, what do we have here?”

The woman gave him a sharp look. “What is it?”

“Look closer, Amy. What do you see? Remember to concentrate like I showed you.”

Amy’s eyes narrowed, her gaze darting past Logan, before coming back and looking directly into his eyes. “…Idiot? What a name.”

The man’s eyes widened and sharpened. “That’s his hidden name? Idiot?”

“Yeah, why…”

She knew why. The bounty. Fuck. Logan had forgotten about it during the fight with the rat army, but now, on top of everything else, he was at the mercy of a bounty that would attract a hell of a lot of attention:

[There is one user amongst you that goes by the name Idiot. Find and kill this user and you will receive the following:

1,000,000,000 KarmaCoin

1 Resurrection Crystal

1 skill ring of your choice

The loyalty of the Silverdagger Clan]

Logan had been lucky so far, since Brooke’s group hadn’t leveled [Identify]. They couldn’t see his hidden name.

But now he was shit out of luck.

The man reached for his wrist, touching a bracelet. Just like that, an alarm blasted through the whole cavern like something out of a tornado warning system.

“We’ve got you now,” the man breathed.

Did he?

Logan cracked his neck, and with a snap, dissolved his mirror effect. Oh well, the subterfuge had been nice while it lasted, but Logan wasn’t built to lurk in the shadows. Plus, since he’d discovered the imprisoned octopuses, the Cursed Rope had been working overtime, funneling rage into his bones. Logan’s rational side had said that he needed to be cautious and smart to find Lara, but it was too late now.

It was time to let loose.

It was time for carnage.

Ernie scooted out of his pouch, hanging over Logan’s shoulder as Logan took out his sword, flicking it and giving the two people an unhinged smile. “Are you sure it isn’t the other way around?” said Logan.

The alarm was still blaring, bleeding his ears. Down below in the cavern, Logan could hear the rats jostling against each other and screeching.

The man laughed. “You gave yourself an apt name, Idiot. Of course I’m sure. You’re in the Kingdom of Pied! Every single person in the complex knows you’re here. My friends are coming, and they’re going to kill you—”

Logan swished his sword, his arm a blur, using every ounce of strength and dexterity at his disposal. The man didn’t even have time to react.

Logan’s sword cut into his neck like butter, slicing into tendons and his spine and cleaving him in half at the shoulders. With a spray of blood, one half of his body went one way, the other went the other.

Ding!

[You have defeated Ryan Clements! Triple experience granted for defeating a member of your own species!]

The woman jerked in startlement before gaping, glancing from the corpse to Logan with her eyes wide with disbelief.

“You bastard!” Her face flushing with rage, the woman went for a dagger holstered on her thigh, her fingers white knuckled. Taking a running leap, she rushed towards Logan, her dagger going for his throat.

For a half second, Logan hesitated. This was another human being; this wasn’t a monster. But then again, what was a monster? These people were complicit in boiling sentient animals alive, in torture. They didn’t deserve mercy.

Logan swatted her dagger aside, sending it flying as he slammed his fist into her chest, his talons digging deep.

Ding!

[You have defeated Amy West! Triple experience granted for defeating a member of your own species!]