Erwin Street looked as though a disaster had run through it. Large cracks ripped up the street. The buildings and shops Grey knew so well had shattered windows and smashed doors, their goods and furniture spilled out onto the sidewalks. Small, humanoid reptiles climbed and swarmed the street’s buildings, and he alone walked down the street’s center, undisturbed.
Dark, yellow blood covered various parts of his body armor, and the innards of a monster hung about his neck. It had been obvious after a bit of observation that the kobolds would fear a greater reptile. The trick had been finding what sense they used to identify such a creature. That was an issue of the past, however. Smell. The monsters had devilishly keen noses.
As for his interest in Erwin Street, well it was twofold. The only one reason that mattered for the time being was… Well, it was nostalgia, he supposed. The third building on the right side of the street stood several stories high, a near tower of glass and steel. Before he stepped inside it, he pulled several steel rods from his Inventory and laid them in the center of the street.
Then he was inside. It was dirtier than he remembered, but the lobby was still the same. It was a large white room designed to project the words sleek and modern. The front desk was long and painted a cool blue. The computer behind it was gone, as was the seat. He could still see the receptionist- Evan, he believed the man’s name was- if he pictured it, telling him good morning when he walked in for work.
He looked down at his armor vest, seeing a nice pressed suit in its place. A laminated tag hung from his chest, his name and photo upon it. Where there was now muscle and scar tissue, only a thin, scrawny body poked through. He smirked to himself. Different worlds. Different people. He headed up the stairs.
His office- if it could be called that- was little more than a cubicle. In fact, the whole floor was filled with such offices, forming a slight cubicle city. A break room sat off to the right, snacks littered on its floor. He pushed open the door of the real office that sat at the back of the room, entering a nice space with a window that looked out over the street below.
Senior Developer Robert Kim. Grey sat on his desk, pushing the computer onto the floor and looking out the window. He picked the desk’s name plate up and turned it over in his hand. Then he crushed it with the strength of Chi Breathing. The man was most likely dead, so what would he care if Grey settled a petty grudge?
He reached into one of the desk’s drawers and pulled out a watch. Kim had always bragged about the thing, displaying it on his desk like a trophy during performance reviews. Grey wrapped it around his wrist. He had about half an hour. Good.
The first gunshot smashed into a kobold on the building across from Grey. He made a note of it. One with the Enlarge Projectile Evolution. Then three arrows landed in another. Multishot. Next came the melee fighters, men in face-covering helmets wielding all manner of weapons. Critical Blow, Rage, Wolfman… He made note of them all, watching the ways they moved and the processes behind their group tactics.
The Hunters had a bad reputation as a wild and undisciplined organization, but Grey knew better. There was a competition between their teams, one that was hammering their squads into more effective fighters. The Tutorial had given them an edge. District Twenty-four was sharpening it into a full blade. It spoke of a clever hand behind the whole thing.
The Delvers’ Guild was another situation altogether. It was an organized operation that had started in the Tutorial. When they had arrived in the city, they had only numbered twenty, but now, their numbers had swelled over a hundred as more and more of its members trickled in. The man behind it all was a man named Eastin, a retired special forces operative.
Their ideological or structural differences hardly mattered, however. Grey knew they would fight simply because they were different. That was it. Philosophers liked to think that war was due to some innate need for violence or spectacle, but in truth, humans engaged in war simply because there was another side. Outsiders were enemies. Insiders were allies. It was as simple as that. The real foolishness came in assuming there was anything else.
Soon enough, the team below had cleared away most of the kobolds and were combing the buildings, searching for the Dungeon they spilled from. Grey looked at his watch and shrugged. He supposed it was time.
The world revolved around patterns, some more obvious than others. Take, for example, the passing of a guard patrol. In this hypothetical scenario, the first force- oh, Grey imagined them as Team H- patrolled haphazardly, perhaps clearing the same street maybe once every two weeks. The second force, Team D, was more organized, patrolling nearly twice a week. It was simply a matter of arithmetic to figure out when the two teams would cross paths. Hypothetically, of course.
Soon enough, the team of Hunters entered his building. Grey casted one last look outside of the window and turned, exiting the office with a small smile. Over his body armor hung a piece of cloth colored black and gold
---
“Quiet down, Jason. If I hear your fucking wheezing over my own thoughts another time…” Eli trailed off. His brother had told him a threat only landed after an example had been made, and Jason had seen the last guy who bothered Eli. Well, what was left of him anyways.
They walked into the building smirking at the name. FirmSoft. An oxymoron if he had ever seen one, and Eli had seen his fair share. He shook his head. School was the last thing on his mind these days.
The lobby of FirmSoft had a light gray tiled floor with white walls and cool, white metal decor. Looters had already ransacked it, robbing the receptionist’s desk of its computer. A light in the shape of the company’s logo hung from the second floor balcony that looked over the lobby. A glass staircase marked the pathway upward.
“Fancy…” That was Iris, her dark hair tied back around her rather attractive features. She had dark skin and a smile that drove his heart to thumping. What was it his brother had called him? Lovestruck fool. Well, perhaps it was so.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“Iris and Jason, fan out to either side. I want your eyes on the walls and ceilings. Those kobold bastards are nearly like spiders. Chin, you’re up front with me.” Eli held an axe over one shoulder, and he nodded to the Korean man at his side, who wore armor robbed from a police station and held a single-edged sword.
Chin was the only one of them he had known before, though to say they were friends would be a reach. More like… acquaintances. Yeah, acquaintances. Their professor had assigned them to the same group. Once. He returned his attention, scanning the room. Wait, was that-
“Hold,” Eli said. He pointed his axe at the shadowy figure that looked out from the glass balcony. “You. Who are you? Are you a Guild bastard? My people aren’t afraid to fire.”
“Veni, Vidi, Vici.” The response swept through the room like an icy breeze, leaving an empty silence in its wake.
Eli’s mind recalled the quote. Julius Caesar. I came, I saw, I conquered. Pompous bastard, then. He raised his axe. “What do you-”
A glint of steel flashed through the air, a scream piercing the air a moment later. Eli turned. No, no, no, no. Blood bubbled from Chin’s mumbling lips. A spear propped him up by the chest like a limp doll, its tip stuck firmly in the tile below.
Don’t stay still, his brother’s words rang through his skull, battering his shock away and seizing the wheel to his mind with a firm group. Eli moved. It was too late.
The figure- a man in the colors of the damned Guild- was in their midst, moving faster than a man had any right to. Wolfman filled his limbs with strength, but the man ignored them, touching the spear lodged in Chin and wrenching it free. Then he rammed through the doors and out into the street. Eli was right behind.
The man stumbled, and Eli’s fist caught him on the jaw, sending him crashing and bouncing into the center of the street. An arrow flew by his head and cracked the ground beside the man’s head. Damn. Jason never missed.
Then Eli was loping towards the crouched man, his axe forgotten in a haze of bestial rage. Kill, kill, kill. He leapt into the air, and-
Bang! Bang! Bang! The bullets ripped into his body, shredding his armor to pieces and dropping him to the asphalt. His vision weakened, and he struggled to lift his head, making out only the hints of black and gold. Then he went limp, dead and forgotten.
What was it his brother had said? The dead were help to no one.
---
The spray of gunfire seemed to radiate the energy of an Evolution. The squad of Guild members advanced, having already killed the Wolfman and the archer. Only the dark-skinned woman was left, and she staggered under the assault of a tall woman with a double-edged longsword, her gun on the ground beside her. Then she slipped. Blood sprayed into the air, hitting the blacktop like so many drops of rain.
Grey’s hand touched a piece of metal as he scrambled backwards. The rods. The Guild members approached him. They numbered five. The tall woman seemed to lead them, but it was a kind-faced man with thinning hair that approached him, his arm extended.
“Easy, there. Are you hurt?”
Grey mumbled something that might have sounded like “no.”
The man leaned closer. Grey mumbled again. Closer. His companions too moved closer, drawn in by their companion’s movements. Perfect. Grey leaned forward, focusing all of his will on the rods scattering the ground around them.
A moment passed. Then another. When the fifth second ticked and the tension had reached an almost awkward thickness, steel seemed to explode from the ground. A spear materialized halfway through the kind-faced man’s skull. Another took the tall woman in the leg, dropping her low enough for a third to pierce her heart. The third member, a short woman with some sort of automatic rifle, took one through the midsection.
Grey stumbled to his feet, screaming and hiccuping pitifully. The fourth member, a younger man, looked on in horror as he reached out. Metal seemed to sprout and explode from Grey’s armor, and he fell to the ground, dropping stiffly into the pool of blood left by the tall woman. He looked almost dead.
The boy ran, pelting down the street with horrified grunts. He rounded a corner and disappeared. Grey stood, rubbing his head from exhaustion. Metallurgy wasn’t meant to be used like this at such a low Rank, which was why it had taken so long to activate. He bit his lip as his body threatened to fall into unconsciousness. Just a bit more.
Grey’s dagger finished the short woman with the gun. Then he limped back inside the building of his former company and dragged the dead man inside out into the street. He looked him over. Close enough. The Delvers’ Guild tabard went over his shoulders, and Grey jammed his helmet onto the corpse’s head, obscuring its features. Another steel rod and a few touches of Metallurgy later, the man looked near indistinguishable from the figure he himself had presented.
He looked at all the metal he had used. Department stores were ever so useful places. He added a few finishing touches to the scene before half jogging, half limping away. His head felt full enough to burst.
He had selected Metallurgy for three reasons. The first was its use in defending against bullets. The second was its practical uses in manipulating his weapon. The third, well it was perhaps the most important for his plan today. The third reason for selecting Metallurgy was that it provided a poor mimic of the infamous Hunter Quicksilver’s Evolution.
Research, it had to be said, was the most crucial part of any plan.
---
“Grey? Where have you been? Have you seen Kamaru?” Jessica’s expression showed concern, but her eyes were calm, unblinking.
“Rose is dead.” He looked down at his hands, gazing past them and at the coffee shop’s floor. “We weren’t enough to save her.”
“Oh, oh my god.”
He wondered for a moment why they acted when it was just the two of them, but then he spotted Lazarus sitting in the corner of his room, rubbing his temples with a grimace. The show would go on, then.
“Kamaru… I haven’t seen him. I needed some space, and I guess,” Grey looked up, “I guess he needed the same.”
Grey started to walk past her and head towards the back room and the stairs up that led to the condo above, but Jessica’s voice followed him up.
“If you need someone to talk to, I’m here.”
Grey stopped. “Thank you, Jessica.” He laid a hand against the doorframe and then walked through, heading up to the condo above. He looked stiffly around the living room.
It was a nice place and modernly decorated. Canned goods and MRE’s sat on one side of the living room next to a leather sofa. A large flatscreen TV hung on the opposing wall. They had brought in a generator, and Kamaru was in the process of installing solar panels on the roof. It was… Well, it was the sort of place the old him would’ve liked.
He ignored the room, however, and walked down the hallway to a bedroom at the end. His bedroom, he guessed. Grey shut the door behind him and sat on the bed.
A moment passed. Then another. He lifted his hands to his face, their shake ever so slight, and then he buried his face into them. Shudders wracked his body, images warring through his mind of times in the desert, times where he had nearly died, times where he had killed and learned the Tutorial’s lessons in blood. The faces of the dead lurked close behind, vacant-eyed and lost to the forever embrace of the heavens.
Quest- Ongoing
Become the Ultimate Player.
The screen flashed in front of his eyes, though he had not summoned it. His hands dropped. His face stiffened, hardening into its normal apathy. Grey fell still. Happiness was in sight.