The sky was a dull orange as dense smoke suffocated the town. Toby stepped out of the dust cloud and loomed over the humans. His head reached the top of a few still-standing buildings, which gave him a perfect viewpoint to locate his master’s target.

Constantine felt the Demon King’s gaze bore into him. Reaching into the confines of his robe, he retrieved a purple gem. Spatial mana wafted off the hefty rock like steam from boiling water. Constantine channeled some mana into the gem, but to his surprise, a beam of energy obliterated his teleportation artifact and his hand. He looked at the bloodless stump with bored eyes and muttered, “Well, this is turning out to be a more expensive trip than I anticipated…”

The Hacker looked up at the looming monster with a thin frown. “Friend. I advise you to cease your actions.” Constantine didn’t even bat an eye as dark energy wrapped the titan’s form, leaving only a looming blackness and a single golden eye glaring at him.

“Why?” The Demon King’s voice thundered through the land, shattering the few remaining windows and causing the knights to stumble back and uselessly attempt to cover their ears despite the helmet being in the way. “Trying to use words now that your broken spell failed?” Toby spat to the side, and the ground shook as he stepped closer.

Constantine shrugged and stood his ground as Toby’s foot was within arm’s reach and had his fist looming over the white-robed man’s head. His posture was casual and aloof, as if waiting for a gap in traffic rather than being threatened by an S-rank threat.

“Wait,” Victor said in Toby’s skull, and the undead titan grumbled.

“None of this is adding up…” Victor continued. “Not only is this man’s body beyond bizarre, but he does not conduct himself as someone who is all-powerful, nor as someone weak. It’s something else…” He watched as Constantine looked up with bored eyes at the looming fist hanging over him that cast a shadow.

Constantine put his hands behind his back and said in a calm voice, “Listen, I can’t say much, but there’s a reason killing a Hacker is a very, very bad idea. My contract is complete. I have no other business here.”

“You bastard!” the commander shouted from the side as he slowly retreated backward with his men and cast an accusing finger. “How can you say the contract is complete? The monster you came to kill is still alive!”

Constantine frowned and looked between the looming darkness and an enraged commander. He went to speak but suddenly paused. His eyes finally showed some surprise as he read something invisible to everyone else.

“Well, you’re in luck, Commander. The big boss contacted me…”

“The big boss?” the commander asked, bewilderment on his aged face. “Do you mean the duke? But how could he contact you?”

Constantine ignored the ramblings of the commander and resummoned his bamboo pole. The Hacker’s eyes exploded with light before Toby could crush him. “Initiate Program: RAGE. ” A stream of green text shot out from the bamboo pole and snaked up Toby’s arm. Toby stumbled back and tried to shake it off, but the spell was invasive, and before he knew it, his vision clouded with a red hue, and blood-red words hung in his vision, screaming out to him.

[SYSTEM ERROR]

[DEBUFF APPLIED: BERSERK]

Victor felt through their link an uncontrollable rage like no other. It was primal, undirected, and downright contagious. Even he felt his brain cloud a little, which was concerning since his emotions had remained dulled for so long. But, like a caffeine buzz, he felt jittery and needed to act on it. The urge to hit something, kill things, forget about all the chains of morality that held him back and just go all out and fuck the world.

No.

Victor cut the connection and felt his sanity return in full force. The hazy red cloud of rage that had infiltrated his mind subsided, and he could think clearly again. Looking around, he was on a giant floating island in the void, back down on the lowest floors of the Grand Dungeon.

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“So the Hackers can affect me…” Victor cursed. He wasn’t even there on the surface, but he was still affected by the link. The threat of Hackers skyrocketed in his mind. What if the Hacker had somehow reduced his stats? “But I wasn’t affected the first time the Hacker attacked Toby. Maybe only mental debuffs carry over the link?” It was a plausible theory, but not one he was willing to play around with his life to test.

Deciding he needed to keep up with the state of Toby, Victor contacted Andrew.

“Andrew.”

“Master!” the grotesque slime’s voice replied a moment later over the black ocean.

“I lost connection with Toby. A Hacker got to him and sent him into a berserk state. What’s happening in Necron right now?” Victor forced his way into his subordinate’s head to see through his eyes. Andrew was currently in the middle of a destroyed town. His white stone palace was ashen with soot, the garden was a charred mess, and all the surrounding buildings were either smashed up and looted or burned to the ground. Down a street, in the shadows of a building’s smoldering carcass, a rugged man was stabbing another with a dagger, dyeing his brown robes in blood.

A pillar of black flame with a hint of gold shot up into the sky near the Empire’s gate—followed by a thundering roar that could belong to an ancient creature awakening from the depths of Hell that echoed through the town.

“Can you get closer? I think that is Toby,” Victor asked through the link, and Andrew whistled to a group of skeletons. They ran past the titanic slug and went to retrieve the massive slab of white stone that Andrew had repurposed into a throne. It took a few minutes, but Andrew eventually managed to maneuver his body onto the slab, which was promptly raised up by over twenty goblins on either side.

The rugged man down the street scurried off with his bloodied blade and left the half-dead resident lying in the street. Andrew had no way to help the dying man as he passed by, but he could at least avenge him. Slimes had limited combat capabilities, but he had some ways to get creative… “Seize that man,” he commanded his ogre servant that always stood by his side.

Andrew waited patiently as the undead ogre barreled after the man. The runaway glanced over his shoulder and cursed as he dove to the side to avoid the ogre’s fist that sent a spray of splintered wood. Alas, his dive was not enough as the ogre had surprising speed—quickly grabbing the scrambling man’s torso with its other hand in one fell swoop.

The captured killer kicked and screamed as he was brought slowly toward the whale-size gray slime that rested on his throne while calmly stroking his goatee. Before the man knew it, Andrew reached out, grabbed the man’s ankle, and opened his jaw at an impossible angle. The man closed his eyes in horror and found himself swimming in what felt like honey. He could see the world in a distorted gray hue as he tried to move up for air, but the resistance was too great. Slowly but surely, his skin began to burn, and he opened his mouth to scream only for revolting gray sludge to cascade down his gullet and devour him from the inside.

Andrew didn’t feel anything except a small rush of power, and his body bloated a little as he continued his journey toward the roars and sounds of destruction in the distance. It took a while as the goblins struggled to walk around and over debris that littered the gravel roads, but eventually, a rampaging titan of darkness appeared in Victor’s view.

Crushed suits of armor leaking blobs of blood through their visors littered the road like discarded trash. Some were embedded in wooden walls like elaborate decorations. Meanwhile, others were pulverized into fist-shaped craters as if a meteor had dropped on their heads.

Victor saw the Hacker standing in the same spot. Streams of green zeros and ones flowed from the top of his bamboo staff and seemed to form a link with the enraged Toby, who killed everything in his sight. Whoever the big boss was, they were clearly not on the side of the Empire as only the commander stood standing, with one arm missing and slumped over a rock being stared down by Toby.

The commander spat out a tooth and glared at the titan’s fist that was coming for his face. “You bastard—” he cried but was cut short as the fist engulfed in darkness obliterated him on the spot, and a sonic boom destroyed the half-standing inn behind the commander and painted the walls with blood and guts. Only two legs remained standing for a few seconds before they toppled like dominos.

And then Toby turned to look at Andrew.

Victor could only see one way out of this. Toby was too powerful to kill through a mere link, so a forced reset like last time was impossible. If Victor was there in person on the surface, he could easily annihilate Toby, but through the link, his powers were limited and extremely expensive. “Aim your hand at the Hacker quickly.” He had made his decision to eliminate this pesky Hacker here and now, so he unleashed a torrent of mana through the link and charged up a Doom Ray.

The Hacker’s eyes widened a second too late as a burst of lightning erupted from Andrew’s hands and briefly lit the darkened street in its brilliant radiance.

There was a loud thump as Toby slumped to the side and crashed into the smoldering remains of a nearby building. The Hacker’s magic that had been coiling around the titan like snakes was nowhere to be seen.

And neither was the Hacker. So Victor checked his status for any clues:

[Unknown Agent Killed. No exp awarded.]

“Well, that’s certainly new…” Victor muttered to himself. The mystery around Hackers continued to grow, but that could wait. Toby and Necron needed some immediate attention, and the Empire had been very kind to provide many human corpses for him to resurrect.