When you started to find joy in your job, that was when you knew you had made it. Or gone insane. I walked that line as straight as any of Wight's drawings. Life had allowed me too many good days, and I tried to ignore the gentleman hiding around the corner with a baseball bat. All debts were eventually paid.

I would be lying if I said that I wasn't enjoying myself. To go from being so alone to now leading the charge of a large group - it was strange, and yet it filled me with a sense of purpose. Perhaps my mind was slowly softening from being amongst the roving battle, but my corruption resistance had been doing a top job of preventing me from feeling like I was losing my grip on sanity. In fact, I felt fine. I felt good.

//Waves of hostiles approaching. Twenty minimum per wave.

I nodded at the message: the pigmen were on the back foot now, and all we had to do—what the gang had to do—was push the advantage. Even as reinforcements poured forth from the back of the cavern village, we had the momentum to carry us forward.

As the first wave of new opponents filtered over the corpses of the ones already fallen, I leveled my revolver and fired off shot after shot. At this point, it didn't matter what I hit; I didn't even care about going for kill shots or using any of my abilities. Anything would do as long as damage was wrought. The pigmen were soon overcome by the tide of crocodiles wearing strange outfits quite similar to my own. It was bizarre, but it amused me. There was some kind of delight in the mania that hell had started to bring for me, and it would be foolish of me not to prefer it over the destructive and bloodied path it had previously led me down.

I slid to the floor to avoid a wide arc of a club and fired my revolver up the leg of the pigman. As he dropped to his knee, a crocodile jumped up, clambering across the grotesque form of the demon, and bit down into the pigman's neck, wrenching a mouthful of windpipe and sinew from the weak spot. The croc-demon turned to me, now covered in crimson and gore, and I gave him a nod of commendation. Better him than me. I didn't see the appeal to want to bite down into the disgusting bodies of the demons. He was doing what he needed to do and seemingly enjoying it as much as I did. The brief pause helped me focus.

I shouldn't get too wound up in the battle.

It had been simple to get swept up in the tide of violence; as much as I did want to kill all demons, there was a greater task at hand—finding the injured hunter. Especially if the Organization was still watching me. It was a good assumption to make, given that I was rescuing the Hunter. I'd need to keep my more hidden skills in the back pocket for an emergency, if at all. Still didn't trust them to know what I was truly capable of, but to tell the truth, I hardly knew what I was capable of either. I dashed to the left as crocodile demons passed me to engage the second wave of pigman opponents. Plenty of dead faux-Erics told me it wasn't all going our way.

I paled slightly at the term, our - given that the crocodiles were demons too, even if they were fighting on my side for now. Some of their corpses littered the way; the earlier fight before I intervened seemed to have been either a stalemate or perhaps the pigmen had been winning, given their advantage of the defensive position. Ahead of me lay a group of houses, and quickly again, I pushed my glasses up to activate .

The middle building held a brief glimmer of red, contrasting with the monochrome world, as my vision changed for a few seconds. Just as soon as it faded, I was plunged again into the ambiance of the Lowers. As I rushed towards the building, the pigmen seemed to take offense to my intrusion into their little turf war. A detachment, using the term loosely, swerved away from the main stage of the battle to contest my travels towards one of the houses.

Perhaps they assumed I was trying to escape or had some other nefarious plan. But I slid across the dry dirt, the muck slick with age-old pigmen feces and dried vomit. I fired through four of them.

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//Three neutralized, four remaining.

Three of them. I noted that Rodney always gave me a more accurate number of opponents than I had estimated. I'd never been good at numbers, which may seem ironic given my previous business life. But where I had excelled was - for a second, I paused as the pigmen rushed towards me. What did I excel at? The assumption would be my soft skills. But then again, even back when I was more... normal, I wasn't so much of a people person. It was more that I knew what needed to be done, and I was stubborn in my attempts to get things completed. I was a mule, basically, in the corporate world, and while I was glad to be separated from that existence, there was a small part of me that missed the lack of bloodshed the office usually held.

[Focus, Eric]

I blocked the jab of a crude spear; the force knocking me back a few steps, sparks shedding from the silver revolver. I emptied half the cylinder on the first pigman and then fired a couple of additional shots on the next. As the revolver spun to reload, I let go of the dagger in my left hand and deftly spun it around so that I could grasp it in the downward position. I swerved away from a swung sword and ran the sharp blade across the arm of the pigman, drawing a wide line of crimson against his pallid flesh.

Two shots into the gut of the next pigman and then aimed to blow the back of the head off the injured one. I spun the dagger again in my hand three to four times as a cold spiral of faint feathers and mist pooled down my arm, and I used the . In tandem, ten beams of red light lit up the area as they pierced through the group of approaching demons, scoring deep wounds that burst straight through them, peppering the group with fatal shots. They dropped to the floor, dead or bleeding from multiple wounds. I turned back to the house before seeing a large shadow loom in my peripheral.

[High-Level demon approaching.]

Barely, I managed to roll out of the way as a much larger pigman powered through and over the corpses of its fallen brethren, a hefty sledgehammer in his hands, swinging to crash down and crack the dirt where I once stood. A burst of murky stone dust plumed up from where it struck, and I spun onto my feet, leveling the gun back at him. He was a good foot taller than all the other pigmen. A mane of greasy hair ran halfway down his back, and a thick beard hung from his chin and matted to his chest from spittle and spilled food.

I glanced back at the building and then back at him. I didn't really have the time for theatrical posturing; revolver fired a shot, and the demonic ammunition scoured his flesh but did little damage.

[I did say he was higher Level, Eric.]

"Ah," I said, my eye twitching as I fired a . The Crimson beam pierced him, but it didn't seem to slay him - much to my disappointment, as his sledgehammer continued around and struck me in the side. I slid across the dry floor and rose back to my feet, a dull pain radiating across my side—not quite enough to break any of my ribs. But a couple more of those, and I would be having a bad time. I hadn't met one with this amount of damage resistance before. I made the decision that I was not looking to have a bad time.

With a sigh, I turned to him, and grit my teeth - firing off a . Just as I pulled the trigger, my foot slipped across the ground at the last moment, and instead of coring him, it tore his lower arm and hand from the rest of his body. The sledgehammer dropped to the floor along with the rent body parts. He yelled out loudly, gripping at the wound, his eyes seething with anger and boring into me. Just as soon as he went to pick up the weapon with his off-hand, a surge of crocodile demons jumped on him, snapping and stabbing into him with small-bladed weapons. I took all the distraction they provided and ran towards the building.

//You are currently clear. Hunter is on the second floor.

I slammed into the doorway, forgetting that pigman buildings weren't built to any kind of safety standard. The door jettisoned off the hinges and clattered across the dark and dingy room. Immediately, the smell of urine and pigman sweat filled my nostrils as my eyes adjusted to the gloom. I headed to the rickety staircase and clambered up, revolver at the ready. With the stairs shaking uncomfortably, I reached the next doorway leading into what I assumed was perhaps a bedroom - although, after opening the door, it had no furniture in it.

By the window, a man was lying up against the wall, his hands across his stomach. Soaked with his own blood. His face was pale and sweaty and about as close to death's door as you could get. Wearing a dark purple suit, across the floor from him on the ramshackle planks of wood, was a matching top hat. Like a magician.

His eyes widened as he saw me, relief illuminating his stressed face. "Ah, the Org sent someone for me. Thank the divines!"

I strode over to him, my gun raised, and I pulled the trigger.