Max shrugged. “Not much to tell. I want to find my brother, and get some magic while I’m at it.”
“Boo! That’s the boring version. Tell the story, you know the one,” James said.
Max raised his eyebrows at his friend being outspoken. He hoped that meant that James was getting more comfortable around the group. He decided to indulge him.
“Ok fine. The long version is that my dad was shit and my mom was always at work. I would have had a terrible childhood if it wasn’t for my brother Michael. He’s the best older brother, he played with me despite the eight year age gap and taught me everything important. I mean everything, from reading to riding a bike.
“He was a hot air balloon pilot. When I was 13 there was a balloon festival in this tiny town called Marysville. Dozens of hot air balloons went up at the same time. The Scottslawn company hired him to be their pilot and take their company balloon up. They had three VPs and Michael brought me aboard too.
“They did this mass takeoff thing, where all the balloons went up at once. Some of the pilots had never done something like that, including my brother. There were a lot of near misses. About a half hour into the flight, the Remax balloon almost hit us. My brother had to drop to duck underneath it.
“Afterwards, he couldn’t get up fast enough. The envelope caught the edge of a cell phone tower and popped. My brother saw it coming and grabbed on to me. It was the only reason I didn’t fly out of the basket. Saved my life.
“We got stuck on the cell phone tower, the basket was about sixty feet up. The envelope started to tear more. My brother grabbed the emergency rope and tied it onto me like a harness. He lowered me to the ground like that. Someone took a picture and I got in the local news. Best day of my life.
“I untied the harness and they pulled the rope back up. Before they could do that again though, the envelope completely tore. They bumped down the cell phone tower and slammed into the ground. Everyone survived, but one of the VPs broke his leg.
“While I was the most popular kid in school for a while, Michael had the worst months of his life. His boss fired him, that VP sued him for bodily injury, Scottslawn sued him for damage to the brand, and dad disowned him for risking my life.
“Michael knew he had pretty much scorched his life on Earth, so he hopped the next portal to here. I wanted to have him take me with, but he wouldn’t let me come. He said if I still wanted to jump through a portal when I was 21 like him, we could live together then. I didn’t make it to a portal in time when I was 21, so I had to try again a few years later.”
Lily tilted her head. “So, wait. Your brother almost got you killed and you still want to meet up with him?”
Max shook his head. “It wasn’t really his fault. Hot air balloons are incredibly safe, safer than any other form of travel. Maybe Michael shouldn’t have brought me along, but there was no way he could have known things would end badly. If he had been a little bit faster on the trigger, we would have been fine. I know Michael messed up, but I forgave him years ago. Besides, he’s my only family. You don’t turn your back on family.”
Lily scoffed. “There are absolutely times you should turn your back on family. Child abuse is one of them.” When she saw his expression sour she held up her hands and said, “But that’s not what I’m saying your brother did. You said he’s your only family, what happened to your parents?”
Max’s frown deepened. A wave of fury washed over him as he thought about them.
James jumped in and said, “He doesn’t like talking about his parents. It’s my turn for the hero origin story, right? Ok, so I’m not proud of it, but I used to sell weapons. One time when I was overseas, I got kidnapped. No one was coming for me, I had to escape on my own. Luckily I’m a supergenius and I was able to make an arc reactor to power a suit of-.”
“James!” Lily scolded.
He laughed and said, “Alright, I’m not Iron Man. No tragic backstory for me. My parents are alive and well, decent people too. I’ve just always loved magic. I think I knew I was jumping through the portal when I was five. Lots of kids have that fantasy, but I never grew out of it. So here I am.” There were a few beats of silence and then he said, “Lily, your turn.”
“I guess I’ll tell both of our origin stories,” Lily said and gestured between her and Yang. “My father is a billionaire oligarch in the Philippines, always used to getting his way. He's tried to control me all my life. My mother protected me for a time, until she couldn't anymore. My dad hurt or killed those around me to keep me in line. I’ve been planning on jumping through the portal for years because nowhere on Earth is safe from him. My father sent Yang to collect me and I bolted. Yang is here because someone told her that portals went both ways.”
Yang nodded along but didn’t say anything.
“You gotta tell us more than that. Yang, you’ve got more of a story, right? Where’d you get those face tattoos?” Ashley said.
Yang gave her a look and Ashley flinched back. Max shook his head. What was with that girl? It was like Ashley was doing it on purpose. She always found a way to piss people off.
To distract them from the awkward pause, Max checked everyone’s hammer to see if it could use the super strike again. Lily’s was already recharged, but Gus’s wasn’t. Gus had one of the older war hammers he had made before he leveled up the hammer card.
Now that he thought about it, he realized he hadn’t leveled up his cards yet. He still had 18 unspent white cores. Might as well use them.
He had four cards, each of them at level three right now. He could level them all to six by swallowing 12 more orbs. That would leave him with six orbs, which should be plenty for buying food in the next city.
One after another, the orbs disappeared down his gullet. He started with his hammer card, intending on moving on to the others when it hit six. However, the system interrupted him before he could get that far.
Citadel Evolution Quest
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In order to progress your Hammer card past level six, demonstrate competence in the following three areas: material, shape, and quantity.
Fabricate a hammer with a different material. [✔]
Change the shape of the default hammer. [✔]
Create two hammers within 32.5 minutes. [ ]
This is an optional quest and there is no time limit. You must pass this evolution quest before you can start another.
Max stopped and read through the message twice. Evolution. That probably meant that his card would change after he completed the quest. He wondered how it would be different. If he had the choice, he would improve its ability to create magic effects. There would probably be some drawback to advancing as well, this system was balanced like that. He bet that he would have to start using larger orbs to advance after this.
It was nice that he already had 2/3 of the quest done. That last task would be tough though. He didn’t have the mana regeneration needed to create two hammers within a half hour. If he chose Quicken in his system his pool would fill faster. But then he wouldn’t be able to use his Augment card because his mana pool was too small.
If he doubled his mana pool, that would fix both problems, so Broaden seemed like the right choice. However, endless years of reading portal books said that Quicken would be the way to go. More regeneration meant more practice and not getting stuck without mana at the end of a fight. Admittedly, those were fiction books, but he kinda wanted to follow their example. Thankfully the quest didn’t have a deadline. He could figure out how to solve that problem after he leveled up again.
He added two more orbs to each of his other cards, leaving him with level five Gloves, Augment, and Drill cards. With that taken care of, he packed everything away again.
His mana was full by then and he created a new war hammer, copper this time. It seemed like copper created a bigger magic strike. The soft metal would be worse as a tool, but better as a magic weapon. He handed Gus his old hammer and James got the uncharged hammer.
“I think we waited long enough, let’s get moving. Ebba is only going to wait a day, we need to be done with this floor by then,” Max said.
There was a general assent and they formed up at the door to the next room. Lily was out front because she had figured out the sprayer. As soon as the door opened, she sprayed the room. The bladder was more of a mister than a sprayer, the brown mist hung in the air for a while.
“Is that shit poisonous? Is it ok to walk through?” Gus said.
“Better not, just in case,” Max said.
They waited a minute or two for the mist to settle and crept into the room. The room looked identical to the previous one, columns of muscled flesh with organ plants all around the base. They crept inside, the closely placed columns giving the room an oppressive feeling.
Ashley suddenly pointed. “Incoming!”
A parasite barreled around one of the flesh columns, its yellow tentacles churning. It opened its bloody body in half, revealing a row of jagged teeth. Ashley’s warning was enough for Lily to spray coagulant in the monster’s direction.
It passed through the mist without pausing. It headed right for the center of their formation. Max had talked about acting like the team’s tank, stopping the monster’s charge. The sight of its barbed tentacles forced him to change that plan. The memory of picking the barbs out of his flesh was too recent. He pushed Gus to the side and jumped, allowing the monster to pass through where they had just stood.
The monster tumbled and slammed into the black wall. It shook itself and quickly stood back up. As it did, Max noticed that its skin was changing from red to brown.
The parasite stood in between Lily and James. She reacted as it was getting up, slamming her copper hammer down on its head. A flash of blue later, it was flat on the floor. James flinched back and held his hammer in front of his body. The parasite tried to get back up, but it was greatly slowed.
Max dashed over and slammed his war hammer down on the monster, right between its tentacles. The resulting super strike blasted the monster back down, splitting it open in the process. Blood and guts poured from the mangled wound. The copper war hammer produced the strongest magic attack yet. James gathered enough courage to slam his war hammer down on the monster, but it was already dead by then.
“Fantastic job, Lily. Used the spray and your timing with the hammer was great,” Max said. He turned to James and said, “Decay, shards; decay, shards.”
James nodded sheepishly. He hadn’t used either of his magic cards in that fight.
They crept into the room farther, Ashley stopping them when she heard two more parasites coming. Lily sprayed the gunk in a wide arc around them and jumped behind a nearby column. With her hammer used up, she would be useless in this fight.
The two parasites appeared a second later. For the first time, the monsters didn’t charge forward mindlessly. They crept up together, waiting for the right moment to strike. As they passed through the mist, their skin color changed as well, turning a mottled brown.
James made up for lost time, throwing out a shard of glass from each hand. The monsters shrieked and charged. Yang appeared on the right, slicing off three tentacles from the monster there. It was enough to knock the monster on its side and leave it open for attack.
The other monster scrambled forward, uncaring of its partner’s plight. James was able to get off several shards before it closed with them. Max used both hands and brought the spike down on the monster’s head tentacles. It pierced something hard and stuck fast. Max was shoved back by the momentum of the parasite, but held on to the hammer. Gus brought down his hammer right next to Max’s. The magic strike slammed the monster into the floor and cracked something inside.
The monster wasn’t dead yet but it couldn’t get up. Yellow tentacle tips thrashed around, searching for feet. Max danced back, but held on to his hammer to keep the parasite in place. Gus grunted and slammed his hammer onto the monster again and again. A pair of tentacles wrapped around his boots but Gus kept attacking.
A lucky hammer blow from Gus hit Max’s hammer and drove it deeper. Something vital was hit and the monster flopped down lifeless. Max put his foot on the monster and pulled his hammer’s spike out.
By the time he turned to the other monster, it was dead too. Yang had cut off all of its leg tentacles and James had riddled it with glass shards. His card didn’t actually create glass shards, it created a pane of force that disappeared a moment later. That meant that every shallow wound James created immediately started gushing blood. The monster died the death of a thousand cuts.
Minor amount of essence gathered
Max turned to Ashley to see if she heard anything coming. Apparently her hearing was the best in the group. She shook her head. Max relaxed a bit. It was annoying that he was running a dungeon meant for much higher leveled people, and still only getting minor experience.
“The spray is very helpful,” Yang said. “It slowed them down a lot.”
Max knelt down and examined the body he had helped kill. It was covered in a crusty brown now. “Yeah. I think the parasites are covered in blood and the spray stiffens it up. It’s like giving them a scab suit.”
Yang nodded once.
“This is great. This means we can spray around, wait for them to stiffen up, then attack,” Max said as he stood back up.
They discussed their teamwork again and started creeping forward again. Max hoped that there were only three in this room, but he didn’t count on it. They slowly swept through the room, making sure they could always cover each other in case of ambush. They were almost to the exit when he held up his fist.
“Hold on. There’s something strange ahead,” Yang said. She blinked and stared at the base of a nearby flesh column.