I finished off the last of the guards caught in the mist. It was laughably easy to kill them one by one. I secured their items while my mana recharged. A few storage rings, quite a bit of credit, and their weapons. The weapons I would sell, along with most of the storage rings. I would keep Obidiah's, it was another seven cubic foot ring.

I was going into the last fight without my biggest advantage available to me. Area of Denial would cost me a thousand mana if I wanted to use it again so soon. I could wait but that would give the man time to recover. No, it was better just to deal with it now. I did recast Second Chance though.

I walked towards the looming Black Dragon headquarters. It was time for this to end, one way or another.

I kicked open the door and was surprised to find... nobody. The ground floor was empty and quiet. Only the soft hum of the mana generator in the background. I wasn't about to risk taking the elevator. Twenty flights of stairs it was.

'Thank god for enhanced stats,' I thought as I topped the final flight of stairs. I was breathing heavily from the exertion but I wasn't winded. I cracked open the door to see the hallway quiet. Even the receptionist was gone from her desk. I made my way over to the office door, pushing it open with my staff. I was primed to retaliate instantly if I needed to.

The door swung open quietly showing an empty office. 'He must be in his apartment.'. I knew it was on the same floor from a few visits with Sharla over the months. The hallway to his apartment ended in a large steel security door. It was locked tight. I tapped on it with my staff, getting a dull thud. So not just steel, but concrete-filled as well. A month ago I wouldn't have had any way past this door without relying on my magma enhancement. Even then if this had just been a simple metal door I would still have had to use it. Instead, I used Metamagic and Earth Fist to tear a hole open in the door, utilizing the concrete inside.

The whole floor shook as my spell slowly tore apart the metal lining. I had to cast it repeatedly to make a hole wide enough to get through. Nobody came to attack me in that entire time. I kind of wondered where Jacob had wandered off to but put that thought aside as I stepped into the apartment. Harold Cotton was a minimalist and his apartment reflected that stark view. Light wood walls accented the darker wood flooring and the exposed metal rafters of the ceiling. The kitchen was done in mostly stainless steel, nothing on the counters to even mark that someone lived here.

I looked around the open space and headed towards the bedroom. The door was slightly ajar, so I pushed it the rest of the way open with my staff. Lying in the bed was Harold Cotton, or what was left of him. He was missing his hips and everything below that, along with one of his arms from the elbow down. The open wounds had been healed up but the rest of the damage had yet to repair itself. The man was hooked to an IV drip that looked to be keeping him sedated. This had been the man that led the Black Dragons, the one that decided all the world should be enslaved. 'How the mighty have fallen.'

I walked over to his bed and used the broken blade on my staff to cut open his jugular. The man didn't so much as twitch, as heavily drugged as he was. I waited.

Lethal damage: You have killed Harold Cotton

The message didn't bring me any peace of mind or joy, only closure. I walked out of the room and didn't look back. I needed to speak with the Shadows then I was done with Chicago. They could clean up the rest.

Jacob appeared as I stepped out of the building, "Is it done?"

I nodded.

"Good, come with me and we can report to Stone."

I followed the man past all the dead bodies, only sparing a glance for Moana and Sheila. They should have run, perhaps then they would have survived. We continued walking in silence, past the damaged gate. I hadn't seen a soul since I exited the headquarters. Either the Shadow faction had cleaned up the remaining members already or they had all fled. It didn't matter to me anymore.

Half an hour later we came across a plain-looking building. The way these people wanted to meet left me wary, but I chalked it up to the group's eccentricity.

"She's in the basement waiting for us."

Reluctantly, I followed Jacob inside. It was gloomy in the building, we disturbed untouched dust as we walked. Jacob crossed the floor and entered the stairwell down to the basement, I followed a few feet behind. Each step made me second guess coming here. However, Jacob never paused to look back or check to see if I was following. If he had I might have just turned around and left. We stopped at a door.

"She's in here," the man said, waving me forward.

I turned the handle and opened the door. What greeted me was a swirling portal open to a burning desert. I could feel the heat from this end. I turned to Jacob with a questioning look. Three other people had joined him in the short time I was faced away, including Stone.

"So, it's like that?"

"Sorry, it has to be this way, Paul, you are far too dangerous to have in our backyard," Stone said.

My staff appeared in my hand ready to attack the four but something pricked my skin and my body froze up. A fifth man walked from behind me to join the others. A thirty-second paralysis debuff appeared in my view.

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Stone looked at me, "Don't worry, Paul. We won't kill you, you did us a great favor today. But like I said... we can't have you here. This portal leads to some other location on Earth. Eventually, you may find your way back. Perhaps by then, you will have conquered your emotions. Goodbye, Paul, thanks for the assistance."

The four men hoisted me into the air and threw me into the portal. Stone picked up my staff and tossed it through. "Wouldn't want to leave you unarmed."

The immobilization wore off just as I hit the ground, the portal ten feet in the air. I tried to scramble to my feet and jump back through as the portal winked shut.

'FUCK!" I screamed, "Why is everyone such a prick!"

I kicked the sand a few times as I cursed each and every one of those people. Had they even bothered to ask me I would have told them I planned to leave Chicago right after talking with them. Eventually, my anger subsided. What was the point?

They had done what they thought they needed to do, not that I didn't still hate them for it. It upset my future plans quite a bit. My first stop would have been to meet up with Frathsar and finally retrieve my reward, then I had planned to return to Fiona's commander and explain to him what transpired.

Now, where the hell was I? I looked around at the endless sea of yellow sand.

"You assholes could have at least dumped me on a tropical paradise!"

I picked a direction and started walking. If I died out here I would haunt the shit out of those pricks. I ended up removing my armor completely, this left me in only my leather pants and a thin shirt. I didn't have any other clothes to wear. After about five minutes of walking, I had to remove the pants as well. Now I was down to my boxers. At least I wouldn't die of dehydration. Regenerating Rain would keep me hydrated.

As I walked, I thought. The Shadow faction must have a portal mage, it explained why nobody had been able to find them so far. I wonder how far their organization spread or where they were truly located. My contemplation was interrupted as the sand under me shifted. At first, I thought the sand was sliding down, but I quickly realized I wasn't on a steep dune. No, this was something else, something under the sand.

I felt the sand shift again and I tried to jump out of the way, the sand below me sinking down into a funnel. I scrabbled at the sides of the quickly widening pit, just barely clearing the mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth that appeared a few seconds later.

I fired off a quick Identify.

Sand Devourer | Level XX

The worm-like creature wasn't Shai-Halud sized thank God, but it was still large enough to swallow me whole. The fact that I couldn't see its level meant it was at least level 27. I decided not to stick around to find out. I clawed the rest of the way out of the hole and started to run. If most of my skills weren't still on cooldown I may have tried to take the creature on.

The creature let out a moaning wail as it slammed its body into the sand towards my direction. The sand stirred at the creatures prompting and a wave of sand sped towards me. 'Figures this thing could use magic.'

I turned and stamped my foot down while casting Disruption. I hoped the spell would help cancel out the creatures. The spell failed to go off. Shit, I forgot the spell description said rock. I quickly used Earth Fist instead. A pillar of sand rose in the path of the attack. It didn't stop it completely but it seemed to reduce the attack somewhat. The rest of the tidal wave of sand slammed into me, knocking me from my feet as the sand poured on top of me.

I was buried to my waist in the sand and the creature was starting to sink back down so it could finish me off. I wiggled around frantically trying to move the sand away enough to free myself. I managed to do so before the creature closed in.

I pulled my legs from the sand and began to run again.

I tried to think of anything I could use to stop the creature from chasing me. The creature surfaced again, this time I cast Blink Step. The spell cost me two hundred mana since I had multicast it and it was still less than an hour from the multicast cooldown. I looked behind me, another wave of sand was coming my way but I was able to outrun it with my skill. It appeared like the devourer knew this as well. It dropped back into its hole and sped after me. It wasn't as fast as I was, with my skill running, but it was faster than I was on foot normally.

I Imbued my staff with ice and water as I ran, figuring a creature of sand and desert may want to avoid the cold. As the beast closed I slammed the staff into the ground and activating Disruption again for another two hundred and seventy-five mana. There was no wave but the water seeped into the ground in the spell's area of effect and froze solid. I heard the creature screech as it neared the cold. It turned and fled in the opposite direction.

I was glad to be proven correct.

I stopped to catch my breath, thankful that had worked to scare the creature off, at least temporarily. I doubt it would be enough to stop it completely. I continued running as soon as I got my breath back. The sand was not easy to run on and it took a lot more of my energy to keep up a fast pace. I wasn't surprised when twenty minutes later I heard the sand moving. I looked back to see a crest of sand approaching quickly. I used the same combo I used before but the creature swerved around the frozen section of sand this time.

"Shit."

Time to try something new. I ran to stand in the center of my frozen patch, activating Eye of the Storm. A blizzard of snow, ice, and sand circled around me. The temperature around me plummeted forcing the creature away again. I let the spell drop as the devourer fled once again.

We danced this way for hours, each time the creature would leave only to return. It seemed to have boundless energy and I was starting to get exhausted from the running. Bella turned out not to be very effective at running on the sand either. She sunk more than she ran with her bulk and thin taloned feet.

I needed to find a safe place to rest up. Looking around I could still only see sand, for all I knew the next dune over could have an oasis hiding behind it. If I could keep it up for another hour my Area of Denial would reset. My other option was to glass the sand with my magma combination. It would probably keep the beast at bay but would leave me trapped in the center of a superheated area of sand. My fire tornado trick was bad enough, heat-wise. If it came down to it I would use the combination though.

As I ran, I thought I saw a discoloration in the sand to my right. I decided to risk it and adjusted my heading towards the spot.

I stepped off the last dune into a hard-packed, cracked, and dried basin. I almost fell to my knees and kissed the ground in thanks. I needed to make sure I was safe though. I moved towards the center of the area, tall dunes of sand surrounded a thirty-foot area that had been blown clear. An hour went by, I heard the beast circling the area looking for me a few times. It never entered the area I was in though. I figured it had some synergy with sand with the way it used it to attack me. The beast finally gave up after another hour of fruitless searching. I watched it move away, the sand cresting in its path.

Finally, I collapsed to the ground and passed out.