Fred’s chest flared like a firecracker, bright sparks blurring Logan’s vision before the flare of light faded as if it had been sucked through a vacuum. Just like that, the hole in his chest darkened, blackened.

The fire was inside of his spatial storage collar.

Hell yes! Logan grinned in satisfaction, feeling ten feet tall. His S Grade spatial storage device continued to pay dividends. At this point, it might as well be a weapon rather than storage—it was that versatile. But since the collar stored his items in what he assumed was a pocket dimension, what did that do to something like fire? Would it continue to burn, static, frozen until he removed it? Or would it be like smothering a flame? Non-existent and extinguished due to lack of oxygen?

Either way, it was a mystery for another day.

“You should have taken us up on our offer,” Fred gasped, his face pale and his lips bloodless. “It’s only a stupid octopus.”

Logan growled as he slashed his talons over Fred’s throat, slicing deep, so deep that a spray of blood splashed his face. Enough was enough. Didn’t the fact that he’d bonded to Ernie clue them in that calling Ernie stupid wasn’t the way to win him over? Asshole.

Ding!

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

[Congratulations! You’ve successfully completed the Quest: Killer, Killer Let’s Get Killing! Reward for completing the Quest: A skill enhancement.]

[You’ve received—]

Relief surged as he received confirmation that the quest was complete, but for now, he disregarded the other System messages like dismissing a text message, his attention on what was important—Ernie.

He was muttering underneath his breath, “Murderers, murderers. I shall kill you, kill you, kill you!” His pupils were blown wide, his mouth gaping as he panted like an overheating bird in hot weather as he tried to strangle Gal to death.

But the woman must be made of sterner stuff, since she’d managed to claw her way between Ernie’s tentacles and her neck, her face bulging and swollen as she gasped and tried to push his tentacles away. But in the meantime, Ernie’s Liche ability had been at work, his diamond filaments sinking into her skin and spreading.

She only had a chance for two more gasps, Ernie muttering non-stop the whole time, before the woman’s skin turned pale, pale like a ghost, her eyes turning filmy and unseeing. Unlike with the minion’s he’d encountered at the resort, there were no flower tentacles—at least not yet. Instead, it was as if she’d been muted, like a bright flower with its colors snuffed out. She stopped gasping, her limbs becoming lifeless as she sagged.

With no more struggle, Ernie could reposition and get a better grip. His eyes full of savage satisfaction, he stopped muttering and concentrated, as if he were giving the woman a command that Logan couldn’t hear. Jerking like a puppet, her foot spasmed, and then with a sudden lurch, she leaned over and reached for something on the floor.

All the while, Ernie kept a firm hold on her, his tentacles wrapped around her neck. Her arm jerking as if he’d jabbed one of her nerves, she lurched to her feet, her eyes glazed and milky white.

“That’s right,” Ernie crooned.

Logan inched his way closer. “What…”

The woman held a dagger in one of her hands. With vicious satisfaction, Ernie watched as with a lurch, she turned the dagger towards her own chest.

Aww shit.

Logan knew that the System had called Ernie a murderous octopus, but this was the first time that Logan felt the name was apt.

One stab.

Two.

Three and four.

The woman continued to stab her own chest with mechanical motions, no expression on her face. Blood sprayed and a gaping wound opened up, showing muscles and flesh.

Ernie had turned her into an unfeeling puppet who would do his bidding.

And that bidding was her own death.

Ding!

[Your bonded companion has defeated Gal Morgan! XP sharing reduced based on contributions made.]

[You have leveled up!]

Off to the side, Shoot gasped, her tail standing straight up and her eyes widening.

She’d tried to help Ernie by pulling on the woman’s pant leg, which meant Shoot must have leveled up. Leveled up a lot based on the level discrepancies.

Ernie let Gal’s corpse slump to the ground and then unwrapped his tentacles from her neck, crawling over her bloody remains as he panted.

“Ernie…?” whispered Logan.

Fuck. He didn’t know what to do. Logan had never been good at emotions and comforting people at the best of times, and this was that to the extreme. The poor thing had just witnessed what had to be hell. There were thousands of rings on the table behind them. Thousands of octopuses who went through torture. Thousands.

He would do anything to have his crazy, happy go lucky buddy back, to take this pain away and wind back the clock. But there was no way to fix this.

Manufacturing skill rings were a widespread practice. The Silverdagger Clan had known about it, so did the Kingdom of Pied. How many other people in the Collective were doing the same? Not to mention that Logan was convinced that the System had targeted Earth because of animals like Ernie, animals with unique skills. The 365-day purge was just an excuse to make humanity fight amongst each other while people like Pied took advantage and harvested the planet for resources.

Ernie looked at Logan blankly, and then swallowed. “I don’t like this place, Logan. I don’t like it at all. This Pied must pay. They all must pay.”

“I’m with you, buddy. This is fucked up beyond belief. But I need you to pull yourself together. Remember that one floor up, there are hundreds of your friends. We’re going to find my sister and the kids, rescue the other octopuses, and then—”

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

“We will crush them?”

Logan let Ernie crawl up his armour and onto his shoulder and then held out his hand for the Cursed Rope. “You know it.”

With one final crackle of blue electricity, the rope jumped back to Logan. The rope was good, yes? The rope is a good rope, the rope can obey.

Sure, rope, sent Logan, you did a good job.

Darting his gaze around, taking in the smashed containers and the animal carcasses, Logan felt his anger surge. He knew that people could talk themselves into a lot of shit to justify something that could benefit them, but boiling animals alive? Really?

Scrubbing a hand through his hair, Logan paced while Shoot crept closer and bobbed her head, her ears flicking and her eyes uncertain.

Logan scanned her with [Idiot’s Inspect].

[Chameleon Vine: Level 18. A master shapeshifter. The chameleon vine’s mimicry abilities advance by gaining acceptance as well as XP.]

[Highest Stat: Intelligence. Characteristics: Curiosity. Hidden name: Shoot.]

Damn. She’d gone up from level six to level 18. That goes to show how much advantage you’d get by participating in a fight with someone way out of your league. And that was after reduced participation points, too!

Logan blew out a breath of air and then glanced at the skill rings on the table. He didn’t have time to destroy them, but he couldn’t leave them. That way the Sky People, Pied, would profit from their misdeeds.

Logan concentrated on the pile and then all at once, willed them into his spatial collar, table and all. There was a screeching, nails on chalkboard sound as the table legs tore from the floor, and then with one blink, it was gone, nothing but dust and dampness remaining.

Logan took an inventory of the rest of the room and stared at the carnage. Just stared. Bodies on top of bodies, men and women, a pool of blood and chemicals saturating the floor like he’d created a blood pond. Slashed throats, chopped off limbs, ruptured chests. It was as if someone had stepped into a crowd of people and went to town with a weed whacker. A noxious stench saturated the air like a slaughterhouse mixed with bleach.

Holy hell.

There was a difference between how he felt after he’d killed the murderers in the cabin and now. Fuck. He’d killed fifty people! Fifty!

And yet he felt numb, as if it had happened to a different person. Logan knew he should be feeling something other than nothing… hell, having a breakdown, a panic attack, anything other than nothing. But, again, rationally, he knew that each person deserved what they’d got. Complicit in slavery, complicit in torture for profit, complicit to being XP harvesters who took the easy road.

Is this what happened to people who were forced to kill and kill? Just like Ernie, their morality would become skewed, where what had seemed impalpable and unthinkable would be just another walk in the park? He had to believe differently. After all, there were career soldiers out there that killed people for a living when forced, but they lived by a strict code.

Logan rubbed his eyes and blinked at the floor.

Wasn’t that what he was doing? Yes, the System had given him a quest to kill fifty people, but he never would have gone on an unending slaughter, killing everything that moved. They had to be guilty of despicableness before he slashed them with his sword or talons. If he ever stepped beyond that and went after innocent people, then he truly would be lost.

But people who were in danger of killing innocents didn’t worry that they would.

So, he was on the right path, he had to be.

And if what Gal said was true, there should be an elevator at the end of this room that would take him to Lara.

Logan glanced around the room, then willed the corpses inside of his spatial collar, one after another. There were a ton of weapons here and who knew what other valuables they were carrying. When he finally got a break, a day of rest, he could inventory everything, destroy the skill rings, and disregard the rest.

Logan made his way through the room, his exoskeleton boots crunching over broken glass, doing his best to avoid the remains of the boiled animals. Ernie shifted restlessly as he did, his tentacles clenching on Logan’s shoulder as if in reflex before he averted his gaze, turning it away from his brethren through sure willpower. Rallying, he deployed [Mimicry], the mirroring effect back and his pale Liche look fading. “Did you complete the quest?”

Logan nodded.

“What did the mighty all-knowing being give you as a reward?”

Logan came to a stop, blinking. Good question. Pulling up his System messages, he reviewed his notifications.

[Congratulations! You’ve successfully completed the Quest: Killer, Killer Let’s Get Killing! Reward for completing the Quest: A skill enhancement.]

[This one time use skill enhancement will grant you the ability to upgrade a skill by one level. You may choose to upgrade a common skill to uncommon, an uncommon skill to rare, a rare skill to epic, and an epic skill to legendary.]

[CHOOSE.]

Logan’s stomach dropped to the floor in shock. By now, he was used to these shitty quests. Quests that had FUBAR penalties and weak rewards. But holy crap, there was no denying that this was an overpowered reward.

“What did you receive?” Ernie questioned. For the first time since this whole skill ring episode started, his eyes glinted with something other than anger. Ernie liked rewards just as much as Logan.

“A skill upgrade. We get to choose a skill and upgrade it. Make it better.”

Ernie’s eyes sparkled with excitement and Logan couldn’t hold back a grin. Continuing to inch closer to the opposite side of the room, his boots crunching over glass, he tried to keep his senses wide open, monitoring for threats while he pulled up his skills.

* [Uncommon] Idiot’s Paradox

* [Uncommon] Idiot’s Inspect

* [Uncommon] Deepwater Explorer

* [Rare] Regenerate

* [Rare] Mimicry Armour

* [Rare] Undead Stamina

* [Rare] Lodestone Creationist

* [Rare] Portal Generation

* [Epic] Liche Devourer

* [Epic] Life Fabricator

* [Legendary] Foresight

Right away, he knew to disregard his uncommon skills. [Idiot’s Inspect] was the same as [Identify] and he’d already hard capped the skill. [Idiot’s Paradox] was his pain reduction skill, and he’d leveled it up so much that he hardly felt pain at all. Upgrading it wouldn’t do much. Of his last uncommon skills, he needed [Deepwater Explorer] so that he could breathe underwater, but again, it was a utility skill, not an offensive powerhouse. There would be no reason to upgrade those skills.

That left his rare and epic skills. [Regenerate] came from Ernie, and he kept upgrading it as he leveled up. It had been what felt like forever since he’d lost an arm against the queen serpent, so he had no idea if limb regeneration would come quicker now, but at the same time, even if he upgraded it, did he need to?

As for [Mimicry Armour] the skill did what it needed. An upgrade to it might give him better armour, but he could already share his armour with Shoot, and he’d only leveled it up three times. Once he had better material to work with other than sand, he could make it stronger. Logan would hate to waste this opportunity on upgrading a skill that didn’t need it.

[Undead Stamina] boosted his endurance attribute by 50 percent, so there were possibilities there. If he upgraded it, would it boost it by 100 percent instead? And yet, his endurance attribute was already his highest stat, sitting at a whopping 662 compared to his lowest attribute, constitution, at 46. No, that wasn’t the right decision.

Since he couldn’t upgrade [Foresight] because it was already a legendary skill, that left only four choices:

* [Rare] Lodestone Creationist

* [Rare] Portal Generation

* [Epic] Liche Devourer

* [Epic] Life Fabricator

The System had locked the description of [Lodestone Creationist] and he had no idea what it could do. That meant it was out immediately.

As for the rest, Logan was torn. [Portal Generation] had been a pain in the neck since he’d received it; initially, he’d believed it would be a lifesaver, but it’s KarmaCoin and Karma requirements were prohibitive. Plus, he could activate it only once every 24 hours. If he upgraded the skill, would it make it more versatile and less expensive to operate? And shorten the activation period? If Lara and the kids were really only an elevator away, it sure would be convenient to open a portal with a snap of his fingers and take them directly to Jack’s cabin.

As for [Liche Devourer], he’d yet to unlock the skill, but Logan was betting that he was close. Extremely close. He’d hate to upgrade the skill and find out that upgrading it also meant that the requirements to unlock it went up at the same time. All that hard work would be for nothing.

And then there was [Life Fabricator]. The skill was already overpowered, but if he upgraded it from epic to legendary, what would that do? The Save Humanity Quest was looming, and he still needed to figure out a way to save billions of people.

[CHOOSE].