“It’s settled then. I’ll pick Quantum Anchor. If it doesn’t work, we can try to adjust our plans a bit.”

Ian selected the skill and they moved on. It would take a little bit for them to be able to test it and they still had one more topic to discuss.

“The final thing I wanted to bring up today is our class evolution options. 25 is approaching soon and we have a few decisions to make, that I think we need to make them as a group. We have the class evolution options we’ll receive for our success in the dungeon. Judging by the information we got, selecting one of those class options is going to put us on the path of this Aetherian Collective. I was going to wait until we saw some of the choices before making the decision, but with us splitting up, we may encounter additional steps on that path while we’re out there.”

“Aetherian collective?” Tank asked.

“We completed a dungeon a while back. Apparently, it was some test, designed to find torchbearers for an ancient alien civilization. They were wiped out by some crazy space monster called a Corruptor. It sounds like these Corruptors are spreading through multiple universes and are a threat to the system and all living things. The reward for being the only ones to ever complete the dungeon, was access to hidden class evolution options that would put us on the path of the Aetherian Collective. Since they’re the reward for an ‘unbeatable’ trial, I suspect they’re very powerful options. Choosing them, may obligate us to something unknown to us currently.” Calvin said.

Tank just stared at Calvin and blinked a few times.

“Wait, you’re serious? Multiple universes? Life-destroying space monsters? I’m going to go out on a limb and say there’s some intel we need to catch up on.”

“Didn’t you know Tank? It’s a brave new world out there.” Marshall quipped.

“We’ll fill you in after this. Depending on the decision we make today, it might end up involving you.” Calvin said.

“It’s tough to decide outright, without seeing the options, or the obligations, but right now I’m leaning towards taking the path.” Amy said.

“Why’s that?” Calvin asked.

“Easy. We need power. We have an obligation right now to Olympus. When we get back, we’re going to have an obligation to Earth. It sounds like whatever is happening out there in the universe is a hell of a lot more than we can comprehend, and I’m willing to bet all my credits that The Corruptors are only one problem out of zillions of problems. The Aetherian Collective fought to teach and defend others. If that’s the path we end up on in exchange for more power, then sign me up.”

“I’m with Ames on that one.” Marshall said, “I do think we need more information before we ultimately decide, but going on what we know now, if we’re presented with more options that put us further on the path, I say we explore them. We don’t know what we don’t know and we could be cutting ourselves off from something potentially huge if we ignore it.”

Everyone nodded in agreement, including Tank and the others.

“Ok, that makes sense to me. We’ll revisit this once the quests are complete and we’re level 25. We’re on a tight timeline, so let’s take the day, and make our preparations. Ian and Seth, try to get the portal skill working. If you can come up with a way for us to communicate, that would be great too. I’d like to spend some time with Crash and Reaper going over their skills. We’ll head out in the morning and knock out these quests.”

With that, everyone went about their business. Not before Marshall scooped up an armful of food to take with him. He wasn’t rude about it though, he made sure to sneak some meat down for Freya before he left.

Calvin and Amy spent a few hours together in the training grounds testing out their new gains. Reaper and Crash joined them and gave them a rundown of what they could do.

Zack “Crash” Robinson was a class called Operative. It was a gold rank class and essentially made him a jack-of-all-trades fighter. His skills were mostly centered around combat effectiveness and versatility. His innate sight skill granted him the ability to sense enemy combatants on the battlefield, even when they were behind cover. It had limited effectiveness against enemies under stealth, but he could still sense their presence. His Burst skill allowed him to amp up the fire rate and damage of any firearm class weapon. This had the downside of either burning through ammo, or overheating the weapon for a short duration. The skill he’d gotten at level 20 was very interesting to Calvin. It was Adaptive Grenade. He could create and throw a grenade that changed function based on his will. He could throw a kinetic damage grenade, an incendiary grenade, a shock grenade or a gas grenade. Each of them had their own strengths and weaknesses and were designed to suit a variety of situations. He also had two skills that allowed him to attune his weapon or ammo. These skills worked in concert, so he could attune his weapon to earth, and his ammo to fire, combining the effects of the two elements. This required a lot of experimentation though, since certain combinations like fire and water heavily nullified the potential. Steam bullets just didn’t pack a punch.

Aaron “Reaper” Ortega was an absolute powerhouse of single-target damage. He could identify weak points, and expend energy to force his shots to strike them, although he was an incredible shot already so he rarely needed to employ that auto-targeting skill. He could selectively increase the fire rate of his weapon at the cost of damage, giving him some capability to fend off large numbers of lower-powered enemies. His All-In skill allowed him to expend all of his ammo in a single shot. This is what Calvin had seen him do against the Glintscale alpha. Since his weapon was energy type, and didn’t have ammo, it simply overheated, rendering it inoperable for a period of time. At 20, he’d gotten two upgrades; a skill called Air Strike, which allowed him to select an area of the battlefield and saturate it with pulse cannon fire from above, and an evolution to his vision skill, allowing him to summon a scouting drone that could mark targets. He hadn’t been able to test out either of them yet. He’d also obtained a new rifle from his fight with the Nightclaw Queen.

Nightclaw Spike Thrower(Gold): This long range weapon has been adapted to fire the spike of the Nightclaw Queen’s mane. These spikes travel extremely fast and have excellent armor-piercing potential. Their impact will pierce through most materials with ease, however is ineffective against energy shielding. As such, the radiating kinetic potential is low, causing little damage to the target outside of the puncture wound. It is highly effective at striking critical weak points through armor. This weapon contains a magazine size of two spikes and regenerates at a rate of one spike per five seconds. (Speed +3, Power +1)

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For Reaper, this wouldn’t replace his pulse rifle, but supplement it. If he needed to pierce armor or destroy a specific weak point, this would be the weapon to use. If he needed to cause general damage and mayhem to a creature’s body, the pulse rifle would fit the bill nicely. Thanks to spatial storage, swapping weapons out mid-fight was a breeze.

The team spent some time getting to know each other and strategizing together. Throughout the entire tutorial, they’d built their fighting strategies around their group, including Ian and Seth. The would need to make modifications to those strategies somewhat in order to remain effective. Once nice thing about all of this though, is they didn’t completely lose Seth’s utility. He could sent them with Runic mines and drones that they could employ on the battlefield, the downside is that their supply of such things would be limited to what they brought with them. They wouldn’t be able to generate any more on their journey.

Calvin dropped in on Seth to check the progress on the portal skill. It was about time to wind down for the evening, but this would be a critical component of their plans so he wanted to see it through.

“Cal! Buddy, you’re going to like this.” Seth said.

“That’s what I like to hear Seth. Show me what you’ve come up with.”

“It works just like we’d hoped. Maybe even a bit better. It’s running on a similar concept to the grenades. Ian created an Anchor here in Olympus. This tube is like a battery, like the grenades. This rune on the end here is similar to the mines. We infused that rune with the Quantum Anchor spell, and had him channel the same energy into the ‘battery’. You just need to infuse energy into the side here and it will activate and open a door right back to here.”

“Perfect. That’s exactly what we’d hoped for. How’s it better?”

“I’m glad you asked. I’ll spare you the details on the ‘Quantum’ part of the Quantum Anchor, but there are a few things that were unexpected. First, with the battery storage for energy, you can get a few activations out of this before it needs to be recharged. Second, is the quantum part. Since the rune and the anchor exist with the same ‘superposition’ - don’t worry about that - we can feed energy into the anchor from this side and have it affect the rune on the other side. I’ve modified the device to act as a rudimentary beacon. If we get in trouble on this end, we’ll feed energy into the anchor and the rune on the device will emit that energy in return. If you sense that energy, it’s us trying to contact you.”

Calvin was very impressed. This was far beyond the expectations he’d had for this, and the risk Ian took seemed to pay off big time.

“Awesome job. I’m going to tuck in for the night. I’ll drop by Ian and give him my thanks.” Calvin made his way out of the shop before remembering something, “Oh, hey I meant to ask you about these inscriptions we got as a reward. Any ideas on what we should do with them?”

Calvin handed his inscription over to Seth.

“Hmm, seems simple enough. It’s like the runes I can etch, but you can apply it yourself.”

“Like a runic sticker. Any suggestions on how I should use it?”

“Well, reading the description I can think of the perfect place for it. Your hand.”

“That would work?”

“I don’t see why not. It’s equipment. Give it a shot. If it was incompatible, I don’t think it would allow you to do it.”

Calvin took the inscription back, placed it against the palm of his gauntlet and channeled energy into it. In an instant, the rune emblazoned itself into the gauntlet and Calvin could sense the skill in his abilities. He’d experiment with it a little later before heading to bed. He’d also need to help Freya apply hers. With that, Calvin set out from Seth’s workshop and headed back toward the cabins.

The night came to a close for Olympus and the morning arrived.

The group came together to discuss the final preparations before departing. With Ian’s portal spell paying off, they now had options as to their next course of action. While they didn’t know the particulars about each of the red runes in the sky, they could make some assumptions. Each of them was located in the general direction of the waves. So, they’d assumed that the raptor madness quest would be off in the direction of the raptors (and Knox’s old base), the beetle hive, was likely located in the same direction as the beetles had come from, same for the Scourge quest. That particular rune sat over a mountainous region, lending credence to that theory. It was also the closest to Tank’s previous settlement.

It took some deliberating on their course of action. They could head immediately for the mountains, putting them near Knox’s last known location. This was the furthest from their current position though. They could also choose to head for the beetle hive, which was the closest to their position, and work their way outward, ending with the Scourge quest.

Ultimately, they decided to hit up the hive first. They would use the portal to return to Olympus and then revisit the plans at that time. If nothing had changed, they would head to the raptors next and end with the Scourge. This gave them the opportunity to gain as much power as possible before possibly encountering Knox. They couldn’t predict what Knox would do, however, so it’s very possible he could throw these plans completely off balance.

With final planning and preparations complete, they made to head out toward the hive.

To their surprise, the citizens of Olympus had gathered to see them off. Ian had scored a cart and several of the kids were having a blast wheeling him about. He seemed to be taking his injury in stride although Calvin knew it weighed on him heavily.

Stan from ‘Ambrosia’ approached the group with a large crate.

“Sir. I’ve put together some of your favorites, and a few other special treats in there to keep you supplied. Good luck out there and know that you have our support.” Stan said, he then produced another smaller crate and presented it to Freya, “These are something special I cooked up for our ferocious little warrior.”

Freya yipped in excitement and gave the man a big lick on his face. The crate disappeared into her storage.

“Thanks Stan, I’m going to miss dropping by for lunch. We’ll be back before you know it.”

Liara was there too with a large crate of supplies. There were various resource potions and elixirs. These were going to be incredibly useful. She also had a small pouch, which she presented to Marshall before wrapping her arms around him in a hug.

“You get your butt back here pronto, alright mister?” Liara scolded.

“Yes ma’am!” Marshall replied. He threw her a salute and a wink.

The group watched the exchange and just knew they were going to make fun of Marshall for the whole trip.

Finally, on their way out of the gates, Liam, Sasha, Tank, Seth, and Ian waited with a regiment of defenders.

As they approached, the defenders all snapped to a crisp salute.

“We’ll keep the place buttoned up for you Cal. Good luck out there.” Liam said.

“Keep Crash out of trouble. He gets funny ideas if you don’t watch him too closely.” Tank said, giving Crash a pat on the shoulder.

“Will do Tank, thanks for letting them come along. Seth, Ian, hold down the fort. We’ve got the portal device, so don’t wait to contact us if you need backup, we’ll come right back.”

With the farewells out of the way, the group set off. It was surreal, heading out for this quest without Ian and Seth. They’d been together the entire tutorial. Splitting up left Calvin feeling incredibly uneasy. It was inevitable though. If not now, then in the future. They wouldn’t always float around the world together, and as they got more powerful and understood the system more, they’d likely find themselves on their own more often. This was a good trial run. They had the portal as insurance, and the group they’d left behind was incredibly strong in their own right.

It would be about a day to a day and a half before they would reach the area designated by the rune, with determination, they marched.