Logan hadn’t leveled up yet, but with the triple experience granted from the kills, he was well on the way. As the alarm continuing blaring so loudly his ears were ringing, he flicked the blood off his talons and with a blink, willed both bodies inside of his spatial collar. He’d just been lamenting that he’d managed to accumulate too much junk, and he wasn’t looking forward to storing a pile of corpses, but he didn’t have time to rummage through their belongings.

Plus, with no bodies, they might get confused and assume he wasn’t in the area. Logan had no idea what the man had communicated via his bracelet, but it couldn’t have been much.

“What’s the plan?” Ernie asked, eager. Normally, Ernie was a bloodthirsty thing, but after his discovery, he’d ramped that up to the ninth degree. He was twitching with the need to go after the people who had imprisoned the other octopuses.

“Lara and the kids. We need to find them, which means we need to look for a large holding area. These jerks took thousands of people from the city. Way more than the rat army. To hold that many, they’d need to have a huge facility. Or a prison. We find that, and we’re one step closer.”

“Hah! They’ve not just imprisoned my brethren, they’ve imprisoned yours as well! We need to stomp on them and teach them a lesson they won’t soon forget. We will gouge out their eyes and pull out their tongues! We will…”

Logan let Ernie’s ranting go in one ear and out the other. The bloodthirsty thing seemed to come up with even more creative ideas for killing the angrier he got. Logan knew it was mostly talk (Ernie would never condone torture), but his emotions were on a hair trigger. That, together with the rage funneled through Logan from the cursed rope, wasn’t helping him keep his own anger under check.

Ernie darted his gaze up above where the alarm continued blaring. “But they’re on alert, they know we’re coming! Our stealthy plan is ruined.”

Logan smiled and huffed a breath. “Yeah, I know. It doesn’t matter. If they go after us, we kill them. We might be outmatched in numbers but not in power.”

After all, Logan was E grade, but he was still a stealth player. His power exceeded his level. He got a vicious satisfaction from thinking about triumphing over these sky people. Even if the people themselves weren’t the same, they were complicit in a pretty despicable act. By now, they had to know that high leveled animals could talk. Boiling alive a sentient, talking animal? These people deserved a special place in hell.

Not to mention that the ones who were walking around had joined this cult-like Pied Kingdom willingly. Logan could see the contract brokers tricking kids, but not the adults. If they were walking around patrolling, and up to who knew what, they deserved a smack down.

And Logan was ready to give it to them.

“Come on,” he said, heading to the elevator. It was one thing leaving Shoot alone while they’d snuck in here, but another thing leaving her alone while the alarm was blaring and everyone else was on alert.

The elevator was a huge, metal thing. A cage. Logan hit the button, and the door opened with a cranking sound. Christ. Pre-System Integration Logan would have been wary of a rickety thing like this—in fact, he would have taken the stairs, if there were any.

But for all the roughness of the elevator, it slammed down to the next level like a bullet. Once they reached the next floor, Logan darted his head out of the elevator, checking for enemies, but the corridor was deserted.

A disappointment. He was ready for a fight.

“Shoot?” he said, shouting over the alarm.

Shoot’s mirror effect was still active, but if Logan squinted, he could make her out. She was sitting on her haunches with both of her paws pressed against her ears. Aww, man. She was barely a day old. A blaring alarm? She would have no idea what it meant.

“Shoot!”

Shoot whimpered and then glanced up at Logan from behind her facemask, her green eyes wide and confused.

“Aww,” Ernie cooed, jumping off Logan’s shoulder and onto the floor. “It’s okay, precious thing! Yes, it’s annoying, but Logan and I are about to make the people behind the loud noise very sorry. It’s nothing to be afraid of!”

Logan gave her a smile. “Just an alarm. Try to tune it out and listen to us instead.”

Shoot lowered her paw and scrunched her nose before she straightened, her tail up. “I’m not afraid!” Sniffing, she clawed the floor.

“Of course not,” Logan murmured, distracted. Down below, the rats continued shifting and jostling each other, and yet they weren’t pouring out of the holding area. They weren’t after Logan. Logan was reminded of Fang, the huge four-headed rat. Did the army need someone to control them? To direct them? It was either Fang or this ‘Pied’ they’d yet to meet.

“We’re going into dicey shit—er, crap. It’s going to be dangerous. Stay behind me and try not to get in the way.”

Shoot’s ears drooped and her tail went between her legs.

Shit. First, he swore in front of her, now this.

And yet… just when did he start worrying about the feelings of a cat vine? Logan smothered a chuckle at the absurdity of the situation.

Letting Ernie jump into his pouch, he led the way to the elevator. This was the tricky part. The buttons for the different floors weren’t like a normal elevator’s; in fact, there was something hinky going on. Each time he looked at a button, the number blurred in front of his eyes before refocusing. It reminded him of the stones in front of the attribute trial entrance.

Twenty floors.

He was standing on floor three, and up above had been floor four. He was betting that the rat army was on floor one, which meant that he had seventeen possibilities.

“Where would rats imprison a bunch of humans?” Logan mused. Oh well, one choice was just as good as the next.

Logan stabbed the button for the tenth floor and the elevator jerked, moving them up so fast he felt pressure radiate from behind his nose. Looking down, Logan shifted his grip on his sword and then examined his talons. They were bloody with gore. Not to mention that his armour was covered in blood splatter, which meant that unless he dissolved his armour and reformed it, he’d ruined the mirroring effect anyway. Logan suspected that he was quite the sight.

The elevator door opened with a clatter.

Logan blinked.

In a whole host of possibilities, this one… well. Logan was in a rat hole. What did he expect?

In front of them, a group of people had come to a sudden stop, staring at Logan. The one in the front was muscular and bald, a white tank top emphasizing his wide shoulders. The man reminded him of Brad, the asshole who’d tried to steal their boat back at the cabin.

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Logan scanned him with [Idiot’s Inspect]:

[Ed Williams: Level 80. A human being.]

[Highest Stat: Strength. Characteristics: Uses humour as a weapon. Hidden name: The Tamer.]

A muscular Brad was one thing, but his… pet, was another. The man held a leather leash in a loose grip, the leash attached to a rat. Unlike the mutated rats in the rat army, this one looked like the regular rats that had sniffed out humans for the contractor, Peter. But a black rat with a pale, pink nose and ratty ears, with tiny black claws, didn’t belong on the end of a leash!

Ugh, Logan hated rats.

Behind muscular Brad, the hallway was full of people. Ten at least. From a jaded eyed man in his late fifties, his hair tinged with gray, to a too skinny tall man with a blond buzzcut and blood on his chin. They were pointing guns and knives. The skinny man even clutched a long, slender pole with a knife on the end.

Each person held a weapon, and they looked like they knew what to do with it.

So, this was the cavalry.

“Ryan was telling the truth!” said muscular Brad. “It’s Idiot! The System might as well have gift-wrapped him!”

“Careful, Ed, Ryan isn’t standing here, and he is.”

“Of course he isn’t! Look at the man’s level. Ryan was no match for him.”

Logan raised an eyebrow. And they were?

Muscular Brad, who’s actual name was Ed, gave Logan a smarmy smile. Logan had already scanned everyone with [Idiot’s Inspect] and no one was below level 70, but no one was past level 100, either. Against those odds, he felt confident that he would come out on top.

“You must have pissed someone off!” said muscular Brad with a guffaw. “We haven’t encountered any aliens other than Pied. Look at you, enraging a whole alien clan to the point they set a bounty! That’s serious stuff, brother.”

The alarm continued blaring. With a pursed, thin mouth, someone at the back lifted their arm and touched a bracelet around their wrist. Just like that, the alarm turned off.

The rat’s whiskers twitched as it sniffed and pulled on its collar like a dog after something mouth watering. Behind him, Logan sensed Shoot shuffling and trying to peer past his legs. When she got sight of the rat, she panted and clawed the floor of the elevator.

Huh, they might have just found Shoot’s first potential kill. It’s not like—

Ding!

[You’ve received a Quest: Killer, Killer Let’s Get Killing! Kill 50 members of your own species in 60 minutes.]

[Reward for completing the Quest: A skill enhancement.]

[Penalty for not completing the Quest: A 24-hour attribute debuff. This debuff will reduce all your attributes by 50 percent during the 24-hour period.]

Logan blew out a breath of agitation, his stomach sloshing. He was focused on powering his way past these assholes, killing just as many as he needed, and then finding Lara and the kids. Instead, the System had thrown yet another curve ball, forcing him to deviate from the most straightforward path.

And what the hell was up with this penalty? The System had threatened to cut off his toe, to reduce his constitution to zero, to take away a skill. But to reduce his attributes by fifty percent? How was that even possible?

Logan had assumed that when the System had killed the AI minion, that these crappy penalties would cease. Although the snarky messages had disappeared, the penalties were just as crappy as before. Maybe more. In fact, he’d take a missing toe as a penalty any day of the week. That’s what he had [Regenerate] for—to regrow limbs!

Worse yet, if he didn’t complete the Quest, that meant he had only an hour until his abilities halved. A reduction of his attributes wouldn’t just affect his physical capabilities, it would also impact wisdom and intelligence, which in turn had a direct impact on his Karma regeneration rate and Karma pool. Hell, if he no longer had a large Karma regeneration rate, did that mean that [Life Fabricator] would revert to its locked state?

Logan ground his teeth as too many possibilities ran through his mind, his jaw twitching in anger.

On the other hand, he couldn’t deny that the reward was intriguing. This was the first time he’d seen something like that. Just what was a ‘skill enhancement’? Could it upgrade a skill from rare to epic? Epic to legendary?

“Well?” barked muscular Brad as he tightened his grip on the leash and tugged the rat to the side of the corridor. It made a choking noise as it scrambled to get a grip, claws scraping the floor. Behind Logan, he sensed Shoot shifting in excitement.

“You should talk,” Logan spat. “I pissed off an alien culture to trigger that bounty; whereas you’ve betrayed your own species.”

“Oho!” said the skinny man with the pole. “Brave words for someone who’s cornered and at our mercy. Just what have we done to betray our own people, Idiot?”

“You’ve enslaved them.”

The man rolled his eyes. “If they were too stupid to take the deal and sign the contract for better treatment, that’s on them. Betray our species? Give me a break.”

Muscular Brad grinned. “Why are we still talking? I want that bounty.”

The others gave him sharp looks. “We all want the bounty. This is a team effort, Ed.”

Something shuttered in Ed’s eyes. “Sure,” he drawled.

Logan smirked. “You think the bounty works like XP? That you get to share in the reward? I wouldn’t bet on that if I were you. The first one with the kill, gets the reward.”

They narrowed their eyes at him, before their gazes drifted to muscular Brad, expressions full of calculation. Shit. Logan had killed the murderers at the cabin, had been forced to kill the Silverdagger Clan, had even eliminated the contract maker, Peter. Each death had been necessary; necessary for his own survival or for the survival of others. But this was the first time Logan felt like he’d walked into a group of criminals.

But it made sense. To step into their roles, they had to be comfortable with enslaving people, tricking them. It took a person with a particular moral decay for that.

Even worse, based on the System’s latest Quest, he was betting that these were hardly the only ones.

Logan sighed. All right, enough of this. He wasn’t making any progress standing inside the elevator. “Stay in the pouch, Ernie. There are some high leveled people in this group, and we don’t know what skills they have at their disposal.”

“Maybe it’s time for minions?” he said, his mental voice full of excitement. “You said I couldn’t transform humans unless necessary, these are—”

“No,” said Logan, firm. It was one thing for Ernie to transform sturgeons and rats, but another thing for him to transform people. Logan wasn’t looking forward to seeing zombies walking around. Who’s to say that they wouldn’t turn into the same fungi minions with the flower petal hair Logan had encountered at the resort? There were enough fungi monstrosities already.

Ernie grumbled, but he didn’t object.

All right, forced into a corner, Shoot behind him, Ernie in the pouch, and at least ten people barring his way who wanted to kill him. In a normal situation, Logan wouldn’t have liked those odds, but he was no longer in a normal world. He was so confident that he didn’t even feel the need to deploy [Foresight]. There was no challenge here.

And yet, it might also be an opportunity. He could try brute forcing his way through, slaughtering them with his sword, stabbing them in the chests with his talons like the other two he’d already killed, but these people were higher leveled.

It might be time to deploy [Life Fabricator] on these fuckers. He knew that with [Life Cycle Master], he could force seeds or bacteria inside of their stomachs to grow. To weaponize them. Biological warfare. But [Life Fabricator] was an enhanced version of the skill. According to the System’s description, he could do more than just grow seeds that already existed.

[Through intricate and highly precise work, this skill allows you to build, repair and control the life cycle of beings by cutting, bending, and assembling. Level is commensurate with your Karma pool and Karma regeneration rate. KarmaCoin awarded is based on carbon capture impact.]

He knew that to create it, he only had to envision it. Had he been too liberal in his interpretation of what the skill could do? There were three levels to the—

While Logan had been considering a way forward, the skinny man with the pole had thrown his weapon, knife side forward directly at Logan’s chest.

Logan looked down, raising an eyebrow. The knife had scraped against his exoskeleton like a knife against metal. With an unhinged grin, Logan snatched the pole and snapped it in half with a crunch.

They blinked at him with wide eyes.

Back to the problem.

There were three levels to the skill. He could build something, he could repair it, but he could also control the life cycle of a person. A life cycle meant that he could go forward and backward. From a person who’d just been born, to forcing someone to age… or—reverse aging.

The other puzzling part was the second description… cutting, bending, and assembling. What did that mean?

Either way, there was only one way forward.

Science.

Trial and error.

“Are you going to just stand there?” shouted muscular Brad, his voice full of tension. After Logan had snapped the man’s weapon, they’d become wary.

Well, if he wanted to get started, who was Logan to refuse him?