I hit the deck with the skill fully charged, landing probably more theatrically than I needed to, and five of the bikers were sent scattering to the ground as the yacht seemed to shudder under the sudden impact of gravity. The deck immediately under where I landed was relatively undisturbed, but within the circle surrounding me, it all had buckled downward enough that I almost wondered if it was going to collapse inward

Luckily the yacht was sturdy enough to withstand my landing and I stood up, tilting my head to the side enough for it to crack as I quickly swept my eyes across the area to check for any enemies that I had missed. The deck was large enough that two of the grunts hadn’t quite been in my area, but the shock of my entrance had left them apparently startled while the ones who were in my area all sported spinning KO debuffs.

“Now that’s how you make an entrance!” Jon whooped out, though I did my best to concentrate on the task at hand.

I heard several calls of alarm from the upper decks and I turned to look at the gathering enemies. My smile grew wider as at least one of them shouted, “It’s Loophole!”

I had been trying to make it a habit to activate Area Sense whenever I had my feet planted, hoping by doing so it would eventually become second nature. As I continued to size up the next level and the bikers that were gathering at the railing, I felt two new presences enter my area and I immediately activated the second new ability on my bar.

“Center of the Universe. Level 1 Activated Ability. Create a gravitational force within your entire Local Area, centered on yourself, drawing in either all enemies or all non-biological objects within your area at an initial pull of 5 meters per second with the strength diminishing by 1 meter per second for every 5 feet from the center of your local area the affected targets are. This ability drains 5 points of stamina per second of use. You may gradually increase the power of your gravitational force by 1 meter per second for an additional 1 point of stamina per second of use up to a maximum of 50 meters per second. This ability has no maximum duration and no cooldown but offers no direct damaging effects. This ability will only deactivate when you choose to deactivate it, if you are hit hard enough to break your concentration, or you run out of stamina.”

I rapidly pushed the ability to its maximum as the grunts were forced to come running and stumbling right toward me. Though the ability wouldn’t hurt them itself, they were converging on a single spot and I did still have Misfortune Abound on my passive bar. With my attention still focused on a large brute at the center of the group gathering on the second deck, I waited, mentally counting to three before I pushed off the ground hard and took flight like a rocket up toward the brute

My stamina bar had already been drained to about 50% as I darted up for my target and I rapidly slowed myself as I came face to face with a wide-eyed, leather-clad half-giant of a man.

“Boo,” I said and then activated the third new ability on my bar.

“Gravity Punch. Level 1 Activated Ability. Rapidly compress gravity directly around your fist before you throw a punch. For every 5% of your stamina deal an additional 50% damage from your base attack up to a maximum of 500% increased damage. If you have spent at least 25% of your stamina, knock the target backwards 15 feet and an additional 5 feet for every added 5% of your stamina spent. This ability has a 5 second cooldown.”

I only put 25% of my remaining stamina into the punch, but it did its job as my fist connected with the brute’s chest. Though he was a rather large man, he still was sent flying backwards from the impact and into two grunts I hadn’t seen lined up behind him. None of them were knocked out but it did at least send them to the ground as I set myself down on the deck and tried to casually walk toward them.

“Now, was it really necessary for you guys to steal this yacht? Is there even a place to store your bikes?” I asked as I materialized an Enhanced Stamina Injector into my hand and jammed it into my arm, returning my Stamina back up to just shy of 75%. As I moved inward and under the third deck, I scanned the area and counted three more grunts and a brute on top of the brute and grunts I had just knocked over. There was a door leading into the main cabin that I gestured toward. “Oh wait, is this supposed to be the boss’s place? You know, I’ve been looking for him. Do you guys think he’s in the back? I’m pretty sure he goes by Snake-”

“Get him!” The brute shouted and then he and the grunts all sprang into action.

They had already all been enveloped within my area, so I didn’t have to goad them into action, but I still couldn’t help myself. While I had never been what anyone would call shy growing up, Jon had pointed out just how much more confident I seemed to get when I was mid-battle and Angie claimed ignorance with her current database access. After taking time to really think about it though, I pointed out that I had always been prone to bad jokes in awkward situations, so it was possible that they just landed differently because I had super powers to back them up.

I activated Center of the Universe again, quickly ramping up the force before I followed it up with Sting Like a Bee. The gravitational center of my ability stayed centered on my body as I rushed for the brute still being pulled my way. He hadn’t been lifted off his feet, instead stumbling as he tried to resist the force but him being off balance worked out to my advantage. I drove my fist directly into the brute’s temple just as he got into range, knocking him over to the side and directly into the path of the other brute being pulled my way.

With one of the two brute’s knocked out and the other struggling to push his way out from under the first, I deactivated Center of the Universe and turned my attention to the grunt’s that had managed to stay on their feet.

“So how about you guys get on the ground before I have to put you there,” I said, staring them down and cracking my knuckles. One of the grunt’s spat at the floor, his eyes shifting from me to the still conscious but trapped brute.

“Do you really think that’s going to work? It hasn’t yet…” Angie asked.

“I think he just really, really likes that line. I remember back in high school there was a week where he tried to answer literally every question a teacher asked him with a pun,” Jon chimed in.

“No takers?” I asked, ignoring them both as I kept my attention shifting between my remaining enemies. “Well, eventually one of you will learn.”

I activated Weighted Clothes and a chorus of heavy THUDS echoed in the space around me as the grunts each went collapsing to the floor. I simultaneously reactivated Center of the Universe, ramping the force up to its maximum as the weighted grunts began to be pulled across the floor toward me. As they all converged, I jumped up and into the air holding myself with Personal Gravity Laws and letting them crash together. They knocked each other out and into a heaping pile of KOed bodies before I deactivated the skill.

“Looks like you managed to get the brute too, though I didn’t see if it was the weight or if he took extra damage from being dragged on the ground,” Jon chirped up as I set myself down and took in the deck, trying to quickly search for any enemies that I may have missed.

I could still hear the clattering of footsteps on the deck above me and I knew they were trying to converge on my location. I didn’t want to say it out loud, knowing that doing so itself would have been testing fate, but even though this place did seem to have increased numbers, the enemies were going down with an unsettling amount of ease. Had I been more egotistical, I might have just chalked it up to the strength of my new abilities, but I wasn’t going to let my guard down that easily.

Sure, I could have just barreled forward and immediately rushed to the next deck up, but taking a moment only benefitted me as my stamina started to tick back up from the 50% spot it had fallen back to. I looted the bodies as I walked toward the door heading into the cabin, surprisingly adding 3000 credits and a handful of enhanced stamina and health injectors into my B.E.L.T.

I opened the door to find a grunt reaching for the handle and his eyes widened just as I drove my fist into his throat, hitting him with the second strike of Sting Like a Bee that I quickly followed up with the final enhanced strike I had available to the side of his head. The enemy collapsed to the floor and I stepped over him as casually as I could.

"These guys have a lot more on them than the last few dens," I commented as I looted his body and added yet another 1000 credits to my wallet.

"Nothing wrong with that. It means we can gear you up some more if the next few dens are similar," Jon said and then let out a whistle as I took in the opulence of the room. "Now this is some fancy living..."

He absolutely wasn't wrong about that. The inside of the yacht was far more ornately designed than the last few dens I had been in, with this one looking nothing like a hollowed out meth lab in waiting. Hell, it was practically gaudy with large pieces of art scattering the walls, ornate tables and random looking objects that I could only assume cost way too much for being glorified paperweights. There were couches at the center of the space and a large TV mounted on the wall off to the side of the stairwell heading to the upper deck, along with vases filled with flowers and pictures of what I presumed were the original owners hanging on the walls.

Part of me wanted to explore, this place was clearly screaming “hiding place” for something, but I could hear the sound of footsteps overhead and echoing down through the stairwell.

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“I really hope whoever actually owns this place has insurance… cause this might get a little messy,” I muttered and reached for an overly large pitcher of water conveniently placed amongst a row of glasses and unopened soft drinks on a large table pushed against the wall.

The problem with a knowledge of thermodynamics was that half the abilities I could manage required an actual source to work with. I wasn’t able to just make water appear out of nowhere just to freeze, nor could I direct it to move by my will like Hydramental could, but if it was there and in my local area it was definitely fair game to alter the temperature of. I lobbed the pitcher toward the stairwell and the glass shattered directly ahead of the open doorway before I activated the fourth new ability on my bar.

“Freeze! Level 1 Activated Ability. Rapidly lower the ambient temperature within a concentrated location in your local area to freeze over a source of unpackaged liquid of any type at an initial cost of 10 points of stamina per cubic foot of liquid being frozen and 1 stamina per second to maintain the effect. Maintain the integrity of the frozen liquid until you release this ability, allowing the natural temperature of the area to return. This ability has no maximum duration and a 30 second cooldown from the time the ability is released. This ability provides no direct damaging effects.”

A grunt rushed down the stairs, stepping onto the now frozen patch of water and immediately lost his footing, slipping backwards and smacking his head hard onto the stairwell like he was in a Home Alone movie. Unlike one of those movies however, the grunt wasn’t able to just walk it off, as a small pool of blood began to form beneath his head atop the stairwell. His health hadn't zeroed out just from that, and he might have been fine if it hadn’t been for the small pileup his sudden collapse nearly caused, as immediately after he slipped, two grunts that had been following closely behind him went trampling over his body.

“Wow, you guys really don’t care at all about your teammates, do you?” I asked with a shake of my head as I put my hands up, readying for them to come at me. Another man came sauntering down the staircase behind them and although he didn’t look familiar, the way he carried himself did. It only took me a moment to highlight him to confirm my suspicion as his name came up as Luca: Viper Soldier.

“Hey now, youse the one that came on in here and started wreckin’ the place,” Luca said, holding up a hand as the grunts held their positions. They both pulled rifles out of nowhere and trained them on me as the soldier looked down at the now lifeless body of the grunt. “Hell, look, youse just went and killed poor Mario here, what gives youse the right?”

“To be fair, he probably would have been fine had one of your guys not stepped on his head as they were coming down the stairs,” I shot back, not lowering my guard. I could hear the door open behind me and I held myself still as my Area Sense kicked in. While I had thought I had gotten all of the enemies on the deck that I had entered through, I hadn’t done a thorough search either.

“Youse always gotta shift the blame, don’tcha? And here I thought we could have a nice little conversation before I hand youse over to the boss, but I guess youse just wanna tell your jokes and treat us like the garbage youse heroes always think we are,” Luca said with a disappointed shake of his head. His hand moved ever so slightly and I felt a disturbance at the back of my area.

I risked a look over my shoulder and confirmed it was another grunt with their weapon raised attempting to sneak up on me. In the brief moment that I had started to look away, Luca materialized something into his hand. I might have missed it had the look of the syringe not been etched into my brain.

“Dude!” Jon yelled in my head, just in case I had missed it and I activated Center of the Universe. This time, I focused on objects instead of people as I turned my eyes directly on the syringe.

Nothing happened at first, but as the force rapidly increased, I saw out of the corner of my eyes as the grunts ahead of me lost their grip on their weapons. Several other objects around the room were pulled and started rushing toward me, crashing against my legs as I held myself as steady as I could. It took a few seconds for the force to maximize, but with it high enough, even Luca, with whatever increased strength he had, couldn’t hold on. Just as he tried to fight against the pull of my gravity to forcibly jam the syringe into his arm, the implement was wrenched from his grip and it came hurtling toward me.

The three assault rifles came into contact with me first and I mentally pulled them into my B.E.L.T. only taking a minor bit of damage from the impact before they vanished into the safety of my storage. I hadn’t taken my eyes off of my target though, and just before it could stab me on accident, I snagged the syringe out of the air and deactivated my ability.

“Yeah, I don’t think we’re gonna be doing that. I mean, you do know you dissolve into ash after using these things right? You really should be thanking me for saving you from yourself,” I said, waving the syringe back and forth before I pulled it into my B.E.L.T. to investigate later. I kicked away some of the random objects that had come rushing over to me while my ability had been activated and moved toward the center of the space. "Like I said, you guys don’t seem to have any camaraderie or else your boss wouldn’t be treating you all so expendably, what kind of working environment is that?"

“Youse heroes always gotta be so damn word-y, don'tcha?” Luca said and his relatively calm demeanor seemed to break as his expression hardened. “Well if youse wants to fight, go on fellas, get him!”

The three men all rushed in toward me. My stamina was starting to take a hit from the rapidity and variety of use, though I couldn’t say that I hadn’t been effective so far. Still, I had to be a bit conservative with the remaining 40% I had available to me. As the men approached, I spent 5% of my stamina and activated Float Like A Butterfly. I began to dodge the wild swings coming from them, easily weaving my way between the men as I delivered several non-enhanced blows of my own.

Even without being enhanced by an ability, my increased strength still left a mark as each strike on these most basic enemies dropped them by 15-20% of their health with each connected hit. In a matter of seconds, I had put two of the three grunts down on the ground with KO debuffs and I was dodging back as the third appeared to swing wide for my body. But as his hand passed by my midsection I received a new notification that took me a bit by surprise.

“ALERT! Viper Grunt has utilized the Pickpocket feature on his gloves. One Experimental Injector has been removed from your B.E.L.T.”

Before I could react, the grunt jammed the syringe into his arm and his body began to convulse. Unlike when Gio had used the syringe, the grunt’s transformation wasn’t instantaneous and I stared as the man’s body started to slowly swell and morph. I wasn’t sure what this meant, but I moved in to try and attack before he could complete his transformation. He swung a newly enlarged arm wide and with a sudden burst of new strength I was thrown backwards by the strike and into the beverage table, taking out a small chunk from my health bar.

“Talk about initiative, the bossssssss hassssssss been wondering if thessse thingssssss would work on thesssssse maggotssssssssss,” My ears felt like they wanted to bleed. The grunt was still grasping at his body as he was transforming, causing me to turn and look for the source of the noise. I got back to my feet, only to discover a large, already transformed snake-man staring with vicious intent from exactly where Luca had been standing. He tossed another, now empty, syringe to the ground and I cursed myself for assuming that he’d only have one on him.

I risked a look back at the convulsing man and wasn’t sure why the grunt hadn't fully transformed. His body seemed to shake and a scream of agony ripped from his throat while his legs fused together. He barely caught himself on his hands before he face planted from the shift in his body's design. I couldn’t wait to see what was going to happen, and I materialized one of the venom-soaked guns I still had in my inventory. There was a chance this wouldn’t get through his defenses, but I wasn’t going to sit around and wait. Luca even seemed to realize what I was doing and moved to intercept, but he was simply too slow.

My hand clenched as I fired and the bullet pierced the grunt’s body at his shoulder. I pulled the trigger twice more, striking him center of mass with two more shots that quickly chunked down his remaining health. Though his body had started to swell and transform, the sudden introduction of the venom seemed to halt the process and his body began to bubble almost dangerously, as if the serum he had injected was simply incompatible with his system now that the venom had been suddenly mixed in.

“On your left!” Jon called out and I skipped backwards as Luca lunged for me.

“You ssssssssonuvabitch!” He hissed and I fired the gun on instinct.

The bullet glanced off his body, his natural defenses holding out as I dodged away and tried to think. If he was like Gio, then sound was going to do the trick, but I wasn’t sure how I’d be able to make a loud enough commotion to weaken his defense enough to sneak a shot through. I eyed the last new ability that we had opted to place on my bar for now and although I still wanted to try out Ring of Fire, I didn’t think it was going to be of use in this particular situation as I tried to think on my feet as fast as I could.

Luca lunged again and I dodged, scrambling out of the way as he crashed into one of the couches in the space, tearing through it like it was butter. I turned and materialized six of my remaining vials of venom. I knew it was a long shot, but I had to give it a try all the same as I mentally uncorked all of them. In as fluid of a motion as I could, I flung the vials forward toward Luca, the liquid leaving the glass in a familiar congealed way just as they had when I had tossed them toward Hydramental in my first fight with Sal.

Time didn’t slow, but it sure felt like it did as I concentrated on the falling venom and activated Freeze! The blob froze over in a shiny, amorphous clump of sickly green shade and I stepped forward, raising my fist and throwing a punch at the falling icicle. Just as my fist was about to connect, I threw every last bit of my remaining stamina into a Gravity Punch. I had no idea if this was going to work and figured it was a long shot, and if it didn't work, I was going to have to stall to try and get my stamina to come back. But even with the threat of failure, I felt like I was starting to get really good at trusting a long shot and I threw the punch all the same.

The blob of icy venom burst into shards and flew with lighting fast speed. They peppered and slammed into Luca’s body, piercing through his defenses and into him with ease. It was far and away more than I would have introduced into his system with just a bullet and like Sal had the first time I had encountered him. The venom overwhelmed his system and his body suddenly started to mimic the grunt. He looked around, a sudden change in his expression making it clear he hadn’t considered this as an outcome before he moved slightly forward and collapsed to the ground.

His body continued to bubble and sizzle before it ignited, burning into a giant pile of ashes. A slew of new notifications appeared at the peripheral of my vision as I found myself actually short of breath, including an alert of the completion of the den. I was just about to start opening them when I heard a piercing scream coming from the stairwell.

I looked over, trying to ready myself for another fight even with my depleted stamina when my eyes fell on a woman in a long green dress. There was a young boy that couldn't have been older than five or six hiding behind her as they descended the staircase. The woman's hand was covering her mouth in shock as she took in the scene and I highlighted her cautiously.

“Warning: Information on this Sentient NPC has been blocked by [UNKNOWN], preventing me from disclosing more information to you. Sorry Loophole, if you want to know who this is… you’re going to have to ask her yourself.”