Logan scanned them with [Idiot’s Inspect]:
[Gal Morgan: Level 78. A human being.]
[Highest Stat: Agility. Characteristics: A strategic leader. Hidden name: Gal.]
[Fred Elliot: Level 69. A human being.]
[Highest Stat: Wisdom. Characteristics: Burns bright. Hidden name: Sliver.]
The woman, Gal, flicked her ponytail over her shoulder and watched Logan’s hands as if she were watching him juggle boiling water. Holding her palms face up, she spat a glob of saliva to the floor. “Don’t attack! Stay back and hear us out. Or are you just a meathead who lives up to the System’s name?”
At Logan’s furrowed brow, she sneered. “I know you didn’t pick that name. There are idiots out there that might like to call themselves that in jest, but anyone who leveled up like you isn’t one of them. You were dealing with a misbehaving System minion, weren’t you?”
Gradually, the rage that had overwhelmed him was pushed to the side. Logan let his sword drop as he stared. She’d gotten his attention, if nothing else.
“You know about that? About the glitchy AI minion?”
She smirked. “It’s just one of the things I know, numbnuts. There were reports of an AI going rogue and acting abnormal, giving out shitty names and quests that had fatal penalties. Perhaps I can help you with that problem, hmm?”
Logan tightened his hold on the handle of his sword. His callouses helped with his grip, but he’d gotten so blood soaked that it was like gripping it while covered in slime. If she were offering to help, that meant she didn’t know that Logan had solved the problem already. The System had assimilated the glitchy AI minion, turning his System messages staid. Boring. She was just stalling.
Clenching his fist until his talons creaked, Logan took a step forward.
Far down the room, Ernie skidded over the solution-soaked floor, nudging the dying and dead animals, his eyes crazed as he hissed and tried to stay away from large pools of chemical water. Logan had managed to break every container, but he’d long since resigned himself to the fact that freeing the octopuses hadn’t done shit. The heat had activated the chemical solution, and once in the animal’s airways, in their pores, there was no saving them.
Still, Ernie refused to believe it, and he continued to try to do whatever he could to save them.
In earnest.
Logan scrubbed his hair, turning away from Ernie, his anger surging anew.
The man, Fred, narrowed his eyes and motioned for Gal to back up.
Gal ignored him. “You made the wrong choice! Do you think we were here, toiling away in this hot room because we enjoyed it? We did it because it gives us levels!”
“What.”
“I knew that would get your attention. That’s right, asshole. We were just like you, XP harvesters, until we met Pied. If we spend a day in this room and make sure shit goes smoothly, we get free reign on the rats below.”
“The rat army?”
The woman nodded. “Each day here translates to one hour down below. You must have noticed that they’ve evolved in unique ways. That’s purposeful and designed for leveling. From regular rats to two-headed rats and on and on. Pied’s agents control them, forcing the higher leveled ones to behave while we cut down the monsters we can handle.”
Shit. It was like sportfishing. Logan had wondered why the rats had been milling down below, motionless even when an alarm was blaring. Just how powerful was this asshole that he could control an army that contained monsters over level 100 and yet just use them for sports XP killing? “He’s letting you level up by killing his own army?”
The woman shrugged. “He’s immortal, that’s hardly his army. Those are just fodder, a reward for good behaviour. Plus, if we make sure factory production goes smoothly, he gives us skill rings. We get a ring a day. A day! Pied has shown us how much they’re worth. Fucking A, man. Each one is like a brick of gold!”
Up above, the Cursed Rope jumped through the air, its tail bashing against the tubes that went up to the ceiling. Logan glanced at it, and then blinked and looked closer. Before, its head was smooth like a snake. But now, it had once again leveled up. This time, its head had formed ridges, like eyebrow sockets. Still only a cosmetic change, but impressive all the same.
You did well, Rope, Logan sent.
The rope can be good, the rope can obey, it purred in satisfaction.
The man gave the Cursed Rope a wary, hard glance and inched closer to Gal.
Logan let the tip of his sword rest against the floor. “And you think telling me this is going to make me take it easy on you?”
She snorted. “You’re an XP harvester who’s already E grade. If I know anything, it’s that you want to keep those numbers climbing, you want the high of those level increases. We can get you that here.”
Logan’s voice was dry. “And all I have to do is boil a bunch of thinking, feeling, intelligent, sentient animals alive, huh?”
Her look was incredulous. “Don’t tell me you care about squid!”
Fred nudged her and gestured to Ernie. “He came with one. He’s a bleeding heart.”
A glimmer of amusement glinted from her eyes. “Hate to break it to you, buddy, but they’re animals! The only reason they talk is because of the System. You think we should feel bad because of a few manufactured pleas and artificial tears? It’s not real!”
Logan ground his teeth and picked up his sword. It was either ignorance or she’d put on blinders. How they could think someone like Ernie wasn’t like any other person was beyond him. But he wasn’t blind to the possibilities. For whatever reason, they’d decided that they wanted to win him over to their side. To gain an ally? Maybe, but more than likely, they were just trying to avoid becoming yet another casualty.
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Or they were stalling and waiting for reinforcements.
“If you’re so ready to give me information, then how about you tell me where they’re keeping everyone they kidnapped?”
“So you can kill them all?”
“Sure,” he said, deadpan.
“Are you looking for the contract workers? Or the others?”
“What’s the difference?”
“One group signed Pied’s contract, the others were brought here by force.”
Lara never would have signed that contract. She was clever. And not to mention a lawyer. “The ones who were brought here by force.”
Gal scrunched her nose. “The slaves are in the cells. But you’ll never get to them. I can’t blame you—I had the same thought! Thousands of worthless sacks of XP, just waiting to be harvested. But Pied knows that they’re a temptation. He made it impossible to break through the cells.”
A vein in his forehead throbbed. To be this close, and yet so far away, was beyond frustrating. Each time he thought he grew closer to Lara, he encountered yet another obstacle. “Where. Are. They?”
“Just tell him,” Fred interjected. “He can’t get there anyway.”
“You’re right,” she drawled. “It’s useless information.” Her mouth was brittle. “You can only get to the cells from the inner elevators.”
“Where,” Logan spat, his hand creaking around the handle of his sword.
She shrugged. “At the back of the room, of course. But like I said, it doesn’t matter. The elevator access is restricted. No one can use it without Pied keying you into the controls.”
Logan darted his gaze to the back of the room, but even with his high perception, the room was so narrow and long, filled with so many shattered containers and stacked shelves that it was impossible to see if she were telling the truth.
Ernie made a sound of despair and then inched his way towards Logan. He clung to the side of the long table and jumped back and forth from the slaughtered humans to the table so he could avoid touching the wet floor.
“Gone, gone, all gone! Torture, killing, monstrosity. They will pay, they will all pay!” He didn’t bother speaking with his mental voice.
His eyes looked unhinged, his pupil’s pins. He’d lost control of [Mimicry], and his colors fluctuated from his pale Liche color to black, as if reflecting his emotions. On top of Ernie’s head, his horns were no longer jumping up and down but were in the shape of sharp points that glittered in the bright lights beaming down from the ceiling.
“Remember the quest,” he said, his voice quivering. “Remember that we’re not done slaughtering.”
Fuck. Ernie was nothing but a cheerful, bright spot in an otherwise shitty apocalypse situation. Seeing his brethren go through this shit had really done a number on the poor guy.
But he did have a point. Logan was under a strict time limit, and he didn’t have time to interrogate these two for much longer.
[Quest Progress: 49/50 kills]
[5 minutes remaining.]
Holy shit, he’d torn through that many people? And like they were gift wrapped, he had two in front of him right now that would satisfy the quest.
And after all, it wasn’t as if they didn’t deserve it.
“Why are you stalling?” Ernie said, his skin rippling between his pale Liche color and black. “They deserve death!” With a scream of rage, Ernie took a flying leap and jumped from the table to Logan’s shoulder before darting towards Gal with his mouth open. Logan had just enough time to shout in alarm before the woman reacted and jumped to the side.
But Ernie was just as fast.
Wrapping his tentacles around her neck and squeezing while his Liche filaments seeped out of him like wiggling worms, he bit her face and took a chunk from her cheek, blood spraying as she desperately tried to pull him away from her neck.
But Ernie’s tentacles were like eight anacondas, squeezing and squeezing.
“I’ll show you fake!” screamed Ernie. “I’ll show you manufactured pleas! I’ll show you artificial tears!”
With a bark, Shoot burst onto the scene, her tail straight up as she jumped at Gal and grabbed her by the pant’s leg and dug in with her fangs. Growling like a dog playing tug-o-war, she clawed the ground, digging in as she tried to bite through the fabric and pull.
Gal kicked Shoot in the side like she was hitting a soccer ball. Shoot squealed in pain and darted to the side, before shaking her head and then going back for more.
Screaming, Gal managed to dig her long, sharp fingernails into one of Ernie’s tentacles with a sick plop, burrowing into his flesh, blood seeping. But rather than making a sound of pain, it only enraged Ernie more, his eyes like black pools.
Logan braced his legs, getting ready to step in, only to come up short as Ernie hissed, “This one is mine.”
Logan swallowed. “She’s yours,” he said softly.
Logan left him to it, and then narrowed his gaze on the man. He’d initially taken a step back when Ernie attacked, but now he was looking at Ernie as if he were examining him for weak spots. Like hell.
Besides, Logan still needed one more kill.
“Hey,” he said, grasping his sword with one hand.
The man had one hand up, raised as he concentrated. His highest stat was wisdom, which meant that he had a high Karma regeneration rate. He had to be deploying a skill that utilized Karma. Even worse, Logan knew it could be anything. Hell, for all he knew, he had a skill like [Life Fabricator] which let him suck Ernie’s lifeforce!
Putting on a burst of speed, Logan barreled into his chest, knocking him to the side and hopefully interrupting his skill.
Fred turned towards Logan with a scowl, his eyes glowing red, as if they were lit from—
Holy shit!
It wasn’t a lifeforce skill, it was an offensive skill that used fire. The man gritted his teeth and gripped Logan’s exoskeleton armguard, a plume of fire swirling around him as if he’d just stepped into a firestorm. It felt like his arm was cooking, roasting underneath his armour, but [Idiot’s Paradox] helped to blunt the pain. Not to mention that this was kid’s play against what Logan had already experienced in the attribute trial. He’d stepped into a perception trial that consisted of acid sloughing off his skin. A little burn was nothing.
“Is that the best you’ve got?”
“Fuck you!” he hissed, and the fire bloomed hotter, a burst of flame flying towards Logan’s unprotected face. Logan felt his eyebrows singing off, his hair sizzling, but even while that was happening, he was thrusting his talons deep inside the man’s chest.
Gasping, he tried to back away and escape Logan’s grip, which only made the wound worse.
With a growl, Logan pulled out his fist, tearing a chunk of flesh, and then—
Oh shit.
The fire had never stopped. And the man was generating it from his core.
Logan took a step back, then another and another, eyeing the distance between the inferno and Ernie, who was still strangling Gal to death.
Too close.
There were a ton of spilled chemicals all around them! If the man exploded, Logan would survive, but what about Ernie? What about Shoot? There was no way to activate [Portal Generation] again—the skill had a 24-hour activation limit!
[Foresight] would be useless—what was it going to tell them, that they blew up to death?
No, it was up to Logan. He had seconds, literally seconds to figure this out.
There was only one solution.
[Life Fabricator]. If Logan could make someone age by picturing it, by envisioning it, surely, he could do the same with fire?
Extending his senses, Logan searched for the man’s bright lifeforce, his aura, narrowing on it like a vise. At first, it felt like a normal, human aura, but when he focused on the man’s chest, it morphed, blooming until it felt like he was looking at a sun.
Like a bonfire.
Moving so quickly he felt a stabbing pain behind his eyes as if someone were drilling a poker in his brain, Logan clenched his fist and envisioned that bonfire inside the man’s chest shriveling up.
But no, as soon as he did, he could tell that it resisted.
That wasn’t how he’d win.
What killed fire?
Water would smother it, turn it into steam. Lack of oxygen would kill it, sucking it into a—
Wait.
Logan didn’t have time to figure out how to smother a fire with [Life Fabricator], but he had something just as valuable that he’d used in many other tight situations.
His spatial collar.
Back in the serpent’s lair, he’d thrown the larvae into his spatial collar, using it as a weapon to help weaken them. He knew that he couldn’t throw Fred into his collar—he was alive—it wouldn’t work.
But although fire was alive, was it really? Was it biologically alive?
There was only one way to find out.
Giving up on [Life Fabricator], Logan opened his eyes, disregarding the blood dripping from his nose. The man had turned into an inferno, blue flames from his chest swirling like a vortex.
With a furrowed brow, his heart racing, Logan concentrated on the fire within the man’s chest and then willed it inside his spatial collar.