Logan had gone through a ton of hardship since the System invaded, through heartache and pain. The lessons he’d learned had been tough. It was difficult to believe that his experience with Eleanor and the rabid squirrel had only been a week ago. That encounter had forced Logan to realize that to succeed in this new world, he needed to make hard decisions. By letting the squirrel go, he’d caused Eleanor’s death. If he could take back the whole sequence of events to return Eleanor back to life, he’d do it in a heartbeat, but he knew that wasn’t possible.

Logan had learned that he needed to make tough decisions in his new world. Where before he might have let a monster or a killer go, called the police or walked away, now he knew that if he didn’t put them down, that decision would come back to haunt him.

He’d thought he’d learned that lesson when he’d killed the murderers in the cabin. Killing another human—not a monster—was so beyond his wheelhouse it might as well be on a different planet. That encounter had left a lasting impression and even after the snake swarm fight and the torture of the trials, it had shaken him; it had stayed with him, shaping him and influencing everything to come.

Look, Logan had wanted to say, I can make tough decisions. I can kill if needed. To protect those I love, I’ll do whatever it takes.

But it was a lie.

Logan had learned that to succeed, to survive, he needed to be brutal. Ruthless. He couldn’t ‘talk’ people out of a fight. If a whole host of events hadn’t lined up exactly—from the existence of the glitchy AI minion to having Asthea log an error report with the System Admins—it wouldn’t have mattered.

Logan wouldn’t be standing here.

Logan would be dead.

If he failed, there would be a high chance that Lara and the kids would be on their own, which meant that in less than a year, they’d die. There was no chance for the kids to advance into the one percent. And not just Lara’s kids, but all of them. Without Logan, no one would know about the Save Humanity Quest. When he’d lost his fight against the Silverdagger Clan, he’d doomed them.

That consequence meant there was no room for caution. If he were in a life-or-death fight, he needed to deploy tactics that would have made the pre-System Integration Logan cringe.

And rage was a hell of a motivator.

These assholes had been nothing but schoolyard bullies from the start. Treating the trial as nothing but a way to boost Asthea’s attributes and acting pissed off when Logan had used the skills the System had given him. They had arbitrary rules they’d never explained, boiled sentient animals alive for skill rings, and they would have happily doomed humanity to a purge given the chance. They needed to be taught a lesson.

They needed a smackdown.

And it was coming right now.

“Repeat that,” hissed Arsen. “If you dare.”

The others were staring at Logan like offended cats, their already enraged visages getting darker.

“I said,” Logan spat, half his attention on stretching his senses, latching onto Errol and activating [Liche Siphon]. “The rope thinks you’re weak. It has opinions on your race—frankly, racist opinions—but they aren’t my opinions. They’re the rope’s. It says you’re unintelligent, that you think with your steroid enhanced muscles rather than your brains.”

“Steroids?” Thorin muttered.

“For you, Arsen, it thinks you walk behind Asthea like a loyal dog, wagging its tail and trying to snatch any scraps she throws under the table. But instead of kneeling at her feet, you’d rather be between her legs. You sick man. It’s seen into your thoughts! Not a father figure after all, huh?”

This time, Logan wasn’t picking the man with the highest Karma pool—he was picking the weakest. And yet the Karma would still funnel too slowly:

660/810.

710/810.

760/810.

But that would change soon.

Arsen glanced up at the ceiling and eyed the rope like he wanted to leap up, grab it with his teeth and chew it to death. “What is it implying? That I have unpure thoughts about my princess? It dares!”

“Oh, like it isn’t true,” Logan said with a snort.

Immediately, the rope communicated affront. Betrayal. Friends don’t lie.

Sorry, buddy, Logan sent. You left me to die. This is what you get.

Confusion came from the rope, but Logan didn’t have time to worry about the sensibilities of a misbehaving sentient weapon. Based on the way it had acted, it had more coming to it beyond a few lies. If anyone needed to take one for the team, it was the rope.

“And Thorin,” said Logan. The man held his clone skill ring, but he hadn’t yet put it on, only idly running his thumb over the edges of the glinting metal while he glowered at Logan. “The rope saw into Asthea’s thoughts. She thinks you’re a buffoon, man. A joke. The rope told me that after you lost the strength trial, Asthea decided to replace you. She only invited you to be one of her guards as a favor to your family. No wonder she’s lying there on death’s door. You couldn’t protect a fly.”

Thorin ground his teeth. “Lies!”

“Really? I thought Hallkelsdottir’s weapon was evil incarnate, so powerful that it made your world tremble to its knees. You’re telling me that it can’t read someone’s thoughts?”

Rope, said Logan, jump down and pass over Thorin, spraying him with your acid and electricity.

Betrayer, it said. Why should the rope obey the user? Liar liar liar.

Because if you don’t, once I deal with these assholes, I’m going to create a bonfire and throw you on it. Then I’ll laugh as your rope fibres shrivel and fry. Logan made his mental voice hard, like steel. You don’t want to piss me off.

Logan got the sense that he’d startled the rope. Intrigued it. The user will get strong; the user will get strong, it said, shivering in delight from up above.

With a crackle of electricity, the Cursed Rope detached itself from the ceiling and jumped through the air. It was missing its tail, so its jump was more like a wobble, but it was still speedy enough that it skimmed the top of Thorin’s head, spewing acid and electricity before it zoomed back up to the ceiling and slithered to the far side of the room.

“You see!” Logan said. “It’s proving how weak everyone thinks you are by taunting you. It doesn’t think you can kill it! You’re pathetic! If you fell in a bucket of tits, you’d end up sucking your thumb!”

“Foul-mouthed abomination!” Thorin hissed in pain and touched the top of his head with a scowl. Acid had drizzled over his head, giving him raw, red-looking patches on his scalp.

The whole time Logan had been talking, he’d been deploying [Life Cycle Master] and searching for a way forward. With the insects, he’d managed to go directly to their brains, but he’d already decided that wouldn’t work. Instead, Logan scanned the room, searching for a workable alternative.

Thorin’s lifeforce was like a bright, red glowing light. Logan suspected the red represented his anger. He needed to look beyond it.

But that was easier said than done. In a peaceful kumbaya environment with Logan sitting in a lotus position with no stress, no threat of death… it might have been easy. Instead, Logan had to figure this out while his nerves were speeding forward at full throttle. It would be like trying to complete algebra while hundreds of ants crawled over every inch of his body.

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But if he’d been able to figure out how to direct the insects in the dexterity trial while they were chewing through his skin and swallowing chunks of his flesh, he could push forward. There was no other option.

[Life Cycle Master] was a growing skill. He’d mastered the art of growing trees and plants, but first he needed seeds. And if he removed a tomato from his spatial collar and used the seeds inside the fruit, that wasn’t practical. Logan could just picture the Silverdagger Clan laughing as Logan focused on growing a bunch of tomato plants. He’d be so focused on growing them like an idiot right until Thorin swung his sword and cut him down.

No, beyond a tomato plant, more importantly, the skill allowed him to control the lifecycle of organisms. He’d managed to nudge the mold in the endurance trial, forcing them to replicate.

So seeds, mold, and—

Wait.

Was that…

A bright stab of pain flared behind Logan’s eyes as a gush of blood trickled from his nose. If he squinted past Thorin’s bright aura, warping his perception like looking behind an eclipse, he could sense other things within Thorin.

It was difficult; it was giving him a migraine, but it was there. He just had to disregard the pain, keep funneling Karma into [Life Cycle Master], and narrow in on what he wanted. It was like looking at one grain of rice inside of a rice bowl. Hard to do at first since every grain looked the same, but once you had it, it wasn’t getting away.

Tiny, tiny lifeforces. So tiny that they were blips and then gone.

But they were there.

Within Thorin’s mouth, concentrated around his teeth and incisors, were bright, microscopic spots of life. These were separate from Thorin’s main lifeforce and lived symbiotic inside the man.

Fungi.

Bacteria.

And not just his mouth. If Logan looked deeper and concentrated on the man’s stomach, he could see dozens—dozens upon dozens of spots. These weren’t symbiotic, but rather contained within his stomach.

The seeds from an undigested fruit. And larvae that had laid eggs inside of the meat the guards had been so ferociously eating as well as the severed tail of a chewed-up tapeworm that had been wrapped around a tendon inside the animal’s thigh.

Not just that, but underneath Thorin’s claws, he had dirt, bacteria and unhatched bugs. Flies had landed, or he’d clawed up contaminated earth. His hygiene was lacking, all to Logan’s benefit.

Excitement surging, Logan kept talking while bouncing from foot to foot, but only one third of his concentration was on what he was saying, the rest was devoted to deploying [Life Cycle Master].

“As for Errol,” said Logan, “brother, you’ve disappointed everyone. The rope whispers in my ear. It says that your soul is corrupted and littered with evil. Caring more about Droplaug than your duty. You would doom Asthea to pain if it served your own ends. How can you possibly be one of her guards when she can’t even trust you?”

“Watch your tongue!”

“They were talking about you in the viewing arena, you know. Saying how you’re tainted. Take it from someone who knows. Why else would the System assign you an evil army?”

Hesitating as if at war with himself, Errol’s angry expression wavered, and his whip sagged in his hand. Looking to the other guards with his ears drooping, he said, “Brothers, is the abomination correct? You think I’m evil?”

He’d taken the bait.

Meanwhile, Logan was already at work.

Concentrating on the fungi within Thorin’s mouth, Logan said, that doesn’t seem like a very comfortable perch while backing up slowly and creeping away from the guards.

The fungi perked to attention as if coming out of a slumber.

Question? it responded.

Logan tried to sound coaxing, encouraging. Don’t you want to spread, don’t you want to multiply?

The fungi sent back a mental shrug. Lazy lazy lazy. Sleep sleep sleep.

At the rate you’re going, you’ll have to wait years until your host dies and decomposes. You don’t want to wait that long to replicate.

Question?

Years and years, not very efficient for a group of healthy fungi. Fungi that want to spread.

But… lazy lazy lazy?

No, I know that’s not true. You’re a strong group of fungi, fungi that wants to spread and breed.

The fungi sent a feeling of intrigue Logan’s way. We are strong! Breeding is our purpose! one fungus chirped. It was lodged around Thorin’s back molar. A molar that unlike on a human, had a sharp, pointy end.

Our purpose! chirped another fungus. This one was clinging to the gum underneath Thorin’s top incisor and was already spreading shooting tendrils as it bounced in excitement.

A group of microscopic fungi clinging to the surface of Thorin’s tongue chimed in excitedly. Our purpose! Our purpose!

You’ll want to colonize from within. Spread your feelers down your host’s throat and down to his lungs. Lungs are the best breeding ground for a happy, healthy fungus. Nice and warm, humid. Heaven.

Lungs! Lungs! Lungs!

Logan grinned, but he wasn’t done. A sore throat and clogged airways wouldn’t stop Thorin, especially when he launched his clones.

Arsen was giving Logan a ferocious frown and unfortunately, he was paying close attention to him as he retreated. Arsen was hard to fool. “Now isn’t the time to talk about this,” he said to Errol. “Idiot here is just trying to delay his inevitable death. He’s stalling.”

Errol’s face dropped. “So you do think that. Does Asthea as well? I love Droplaug, of course I do, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do my duty. Being one of Asthea’s guards means everything to me. I would never do anything to jeopardize it.”

“Don’t be stupid. This isn’t the time and place.”

“But…”

Logan let Errol’s objection go in one ear and out the other. He was too focused on the next stage in his plan. Errol’s distress grew, and Arsen was forced to turn his attention to him and away from Logan. He was no longer examining Logan like his life depended upon it.

While they were arguing, Logan continued to creep backwards, small unnoticeable shuffles. He needed to create distance so that when they inevitably went after him, he’d have room.

And talk about a successful diversion. Logan hadn’t thought the chances of distracting the guards with accusations would work, but boy, was he wrong. And yet, he knew they’d come to their senses eventually, which meant when Thorin put on his skill ring and generated his clones, Logan would be outclassed yet again.

He needed to be speedy. He needed to be sneaky.

This was going to be tricky. If Thorin got wind of what Logan was doing, he’d stop arguing and put his attention towards cutting him down. Logan needed to incapacitate him stealthily, growing the things inside his stomach simultaneously so they’d explode all at once.

Logan glanced at his Karma pool again:

660/810.

510/810.

460/810.

Yes! It was draining rapidly, which meant that he would be draining Errol’s Karma just as fast. Errol was still standing around as if nothing were wrong, but that was the beauty of [Liche Siphon].

It was insidious.

For this next part, he needed to be focused, he needed to be a master. Logan took every ounce of anger that he’d felt after watching them kick his corpse, every inch of rage, and funneled it into [Life Cycle Master], latching onto the fruit seeds and larvae inside of Thorin’s stomach, acting as if they were one and the same. He’d accidently grown bark ants back at the cabin, and if he’d done that by accident, surely, he could make a monster on purpose.

But the seed was odd.

The size of an orange seed, but pink with violet spots and black fuzz.

Despite it being odd, it was still a seed. Logan pretended it was like the raspberry plants. Grinding his teeth, he nudged it along, envisioning a shoot growing and then not just envisioning it—he made it happen. At first, the shoot stalled. Logan had an image of a normal shoot in mind, something like the green sprouts from his bean plants.

This plant wasn’t the same.

When he figured that out and realized the plant had a purple stem, Logan changed his perspective, thinking of a tropical rainforest, thinking of…

It was from a tree.

Holy shit.

On Thorin’s world, they must have fruit trees that hosted fruit that looked like purple avocados.

Logan knew how to grow trees.

Logan was a tree master.

But that wasn’t all he wanted. As he commanded the shoot to suck moisture from Thorin’s stomach, Logan pictured the larvae and interwove the roots of the tree into the bug. Like a maggot, the larvae started to hatch, wiggling like a worm, but it wasn’t hatching like normal. It was part of the fruit tree.

Logan grinned.

Thorin scratched his chest. It was a gentle scratch at first, and then a vigorous scratch as if he had a rash. Pulling his amour away from his chest and creating a gap between his clothing, he wiggled his shoulders and shifted in place. “Brothers, I feel weird.” Thorin coughed and spat a glob of spit. “Like I have a spot of Nonzucklo flu.”

Lungs! Lungs! Lungs! chanted the fungi.

Just what he wanted. The fungi were spreading down Thorin’s throat and into his lungs, while the shoots inside of his stomach continued to grow. Better yet, all this work needed a massive Karma surge. Logan’s pool was rapidly draining:

360/810.

210/810.

160/810.

But he didn’t stop there. With a grunt of effort, Logan focused on the unhatched bugs underneath Thorin’s claws. Nudging them along, he envisioned the eggs wiggling and morphing into maggots, and then morphing into wiggling worms.

But that wasn’t all he wanted.

You’re a part of Thorin. A Thorin bug.

Logan commanded the larvae to merge with Thorin’s skin. It was back to visualization. Just like he’d created his armour by forcing the sandstone grains to compact and come together, he envisioned Thorin’s skin and the worm coming together like a patchwork quilt. Underneath the fine hairs on the pads of Thorin’s fingers, the worm buried in, acting like ticks that had latched onto the ends of his finger pads. Wiggling worms.

Thorin stopped scratching, suddenly stopping short, his expression full of confusion before it warped into horror as he peered at his fingers. Yelping like a dog, he shook his hands like trying to throw off cobwebs, then started to hack and cough. “Brothers! Abomination! T-there’s something—” cough “—wrong! I c-can’t breathe and there’s—!” Thorin screamed.

Arsen looked at him in confusion before his expression cleared in realization. “The off-worlder is deploying his skills! Quick, Thorin, launch your clones!”

But Thorin had no time to spare for his clones. Screaming, he grabbed his sword and started…

Damn.

Cutting off the ends of his fingers.