Would you like to learn the mutation Shock Gland? This is a Greater Mutation. You may currently only have 1 Greater Mutation

Erin looked up at Jonah, a +1 Tesla Spear in hand. "Are you sure you don't want this?"

He nodded back, "I'm sure. I've got this sonar, remember? It's even unlocked new talent options."

"It unlocked talents? What happens to those if you replace the item?"

He shrugged, "I'm not sure. I only have multiple mutations on my 'arms' slot, and they don't have talents attached to them. It does let me freely swap between them now that I have more than one though."

"So you could use this mutation and change in the future, right? I'd hate to have it locked to my character when you're the one that's stuck here."

"That's true, but I think getting you powered up will be more helpful right now. The humans... I mean, players, will be coming at us in teams, and I think the only way we'll stand a chance will be as our own team."

He smiled at her, rows shark teeth making the gesture predatory, "Besides - don't you want to be Storm?"

"Okay, okay, I'll take the shiny loot already," she said, mock-exasperated. She accepted the prompt. The feedback was intense and immediate. Lightning raced up her arms and concentrated in her shoulders. It didn't hurt, but every nerve was lit up just the same. She knew exactly how to use it now too. She collected a ball of lightning between her hands and brought them up to her forehead. The ball grew larger, until it hit critical mass, and exploded outward in a bolt. The burst hit a nearby crab, which seized up and started spasming all 10 legs.

Action Log: Your Lightning Blast hits Giant Enemy Crab for 55 electric damage

Action Log: Giant Enemy Crab is stunned for 3 seconds.

Wow, now that's a good debuff, Erin thought. Three seconds of being unable to move could be an eternity in combat. Eventually, the crab did start to lumber toward her though.

"Well that was cool, but can you kill it now?" She asked her companion, only to find him already in motion. One barbed harpoon whipped out from his left wrist, while he chambered the other arm at his waist. His speed was good, though markedly slower what she could do.

The first bone harpoon sank in a joint near the base of the crab and started retracting to pull the two of them together, even as Jonah ate up the distance between. Right before the impact, she saw him grab and pull the tendon taught with his off-hand, slamming the other fist home. Apparently he fired that same harpoon at point-blank range because it exploded out the backside of the carapace in a spray of chitin fragments. As its body slumped forward, she saw that the shot had actually blown out a sizeable exit wound.

"Woah, are you like some kind of combat savant or something?" It had happened so fast, and so smoothly. She was genuinely impressed.

With a few jerks, he managed to figure out how to retract his harpoon from the carcass, both trailing faint ribbons of ichor in circles around him. He gave a shrug that might have been embarrassed.

"Eternal War: Singularity" he said by explanation. "You do enough zero-g axe fighting, and you learn things."

"And by 'enough', you're talking how many hundreds of hours?"

"We space vikings don't talk about that number. That way lies madness."

They laughed together a moment, and something seemed to ease between them. Shared nerd cred, she supposed.

"I'm still trying to get a handle on this mutation thing, too", Jonah said. "It seems random what will give one to you, but it's still kind of intuitive."

Erin nodded. "It's unique from the base game, but kind of familiar. It's like the exact opposite of the Inventor class. You get Inspiration from certain monster parts, and turn those into Inventions."

"So we're reversing their reverse engineering? Does that make it forward engineering?"

Erin smiled at that. "Is it still a dad joke if you're not a dad?" Her face paled at the thought. "Oh, shit - please tell me you're not a dad."

He shook his head, "No, the worst I've been accused of is having a dad bod. I'm, ah, single."

"Hey, me too!" she said, perhaps too cheerfully. "Single, that is. Never had a dad bod, I don't think". She eyed her own shoulders, "Though, this musculature might qualify". She frowned, "What were we talking about again?"

"Character progression," he said, turning to eye the pile of loot. "Am I going to have to worry about these guys coming back for their stuff?"

"Probably," she said. "I'm not really sure how that's going to work through, since you normally don't drop any gear on death, even in Player vs Player. You respawn with it still equipped."

"So it's instanced loot maybe? I guess it pays to be the host of the game sometimes."

"They'll probably still be back, though. You... I mean, the players drop an experience pool when they die. We should probably move away from it."

"Won't get any argument from me," he said, turning to her. "Where to?"

"Actually, I'm gonna grab this first." She reached into the pile of equipment and pulled out the speargun. She hefted it and checked the loading action. "I may have used these a time or two before. Glad to see I can equip it as a Mermaid."

"For some reason, that idea didn't even occur to me," Jonah said, looking at the pile, perplexed. He shrugged, while she slung the weapon over her shoulder.

She was glad now that she had already charted a course for them. She may have possibly been the one who wrote the definitive leveling guide for the area. And kept it updated every patch. Slightly obsessively.

They swam close enough to chat as she led the way.

"So this 'Manhunter' talent sucks, right?" Erin didn't even pitch it as a question. "I planned for the fact we won't get quest XP here, and really doubled-down on the rare spawn elites, plus the open dungeon-"

"Open Dungeon? Like, not instanced to any group?"

"Right. I figured we'd pick up the lost experience grinding there. It should have taken about 10 hours-"

"Are you saying we can attack players while they're in a dungeon?"

"Well... Yeah, I see your point. It is much riskier though."

"What's the risk of taking it slower then? Ten hours or twenty, I guess I'm basically immortal. Serially, at least."

"The trouble lies in the tracking quest on you. I'm pretty sure all the people that used to have it lost the session after you switched zones. Now that you're here, the longer you stay, the more people will get a persistent beacon to your location."

She pointed backward, to where they were swimming from. "Those same guys you fought still have the quest. The system really wants you dead, so it's dialed the tracking up to the maximum. It's feeding the players your exact location, at all times. They might even share that quest and bring a bigger party."

"Woah." His face tightens a bit at the thought, doubtless remembering the previous day. "But you think it reset earlier when we switch zones? What makes you say that? "

"Yeah, any of those level 50 dudes could have steamed right in here any time since...we...". She missed a stroke in her swim, coming to an awkward halt in the water.

"Can it really be that easy?" she asked out loud.

"I think you lost me," Jonah asked, circling back to join her.

"There were a lot of higher-level people hunting you before, right? The reward was mother-of-pearl, the freemium currency. You would have to pay real money to get that normally, so if those people had been able to track you, they would have kept going - at least some of them."

"Oh, shit. Couldn't you have shared that tidbit at the time?" She expected his face to look recriminating, but instead, he seemed fairly neutral.

She shrugged helplessly. "I didn't know anything at the time- still don't, really. I just knew you needed some rest - which you did get, right?"

"Yeah, I guess you're right. And I see what you mean, I would have stood no chance if some of those Dreadnaughts came this way." He shuddered, then looked at her expectantly, "So now you think if we just jump through a level border, the quest goes away?"

"I think so. I just have no idea if it'll be a clean slate, or if it pops back up for those guys that already accepted it," she said. "I hate being interrupted while XP grinding."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"I guess that means we might be on a time limit after all. Tell me again why we're even planning on leveling, instead of just finding those other merfolk?"

"Well, that's because of another hypothesis - just a guess if I'm being honest."

Jonah looked around at the apparent lack of people here to murder him. "The last one worked out. I'm all ear... earholes?"

"First, let's dip into the Midnight Sheen zone actually - in case it does wipe out that quest, it's well worth the detour. It actually juts into this zone like a big old pen..." She paused and looked at him, cheeks suddenly flushing. "Uh, like a peninsula. Yeah. Like one of those."

"Oh, I see." Jonah said to her with perfect innocence. "Is the peninsula where we're grinding, or are we doing it somewhere else?" He stared at her straight-faced for a long second, perfectly serious. He couldn't hold it, and they both burst out laughing. Erin just shook her head, cheeks still feeling too hot even in the water.

As they got back to swimming she addressed his previous question. "Ahem. So, the reason we're... leveling." She had to think twice as hard to try and avoid innuendos now. "I think there's a cutoff for this kill order on you. Otherwise, it wouldn't be such a big deal when people find the end-game merfolk base. I've never heard anyone talk about a tracking quest like this for merfolk, so it can't be that common of a thing."

"What makes you think leveling up will be the reason it goes away then?"

"No reason really, it's just kind of makes sense. Could just as easily be time-based, or death based, or any number of things. But at least being high level will help you defend yourself. The other merfolk might know more, but if the quest marker lets players follow you to them... Yeah, that would probably suck for a lot of reasons."

Jonah seemed impressed, "You've really thought this through on a lot of angles huh? It's been all I could do just to... well stay sane, honestly." He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and said, "Thanks, seriously. You've done so much to help me, and you didn't have to. I just wish there was some way I could make it up, honestly."

Erin nodded, throat tightening up. He was right, but, at the same time, she couldn't have done anything else. Just a few days ago, she had thought she was working her dream job, making unbelievably cool games, part of a great team of people. It had started to feel like her extended family. Then boom, it turned out she was working in human trafficking, commoditizing human suffering. She wasn't sure she was handling it well.

Turned out she didn't have to answer him though - abruptly, they were in Midnight Sheen.