As usual, Claire lit the fire with one of her specialised arrows. I meant to ask her if I could do something similar with my spear, but in the end I decided that we had bigger fish to fry. It almost certainly required the help of an enchanter — not something we were likely to find in a dingy old shack that was quickly filling with smoke.

“Don’t tell me this chimney is a fake,” Claire said.

“I think it’s just supremely blocked,” I replied. “Find me a broom and I’ll sweep it out or poke the biggest clumps or something.”

Instead, we just let the fire die out before we asphyxiated our characters. The last thing we needed after our various close encounters with death was to die in such a mundane way. I’d never live it down if I suddenly respawned in Bill’s Yard, coughing and hacking with not a single exciting death story to be told.

“So,” I began. “We managed to get into one cart pretty easily — what’s the chance that we just stumble upon the same driver and ask for another ride? He was happy to get us this far, and it didn’t seem like there was much love lost between him and Asteroth.”

Claire grunted. “I don’t want to rely on finding him again — there’s gotta be a couple thousand carts going in and out of that place each day. We’d have to get insanely lucky to find him without being seen.”

I poked the deadened coals and wished we’d holed up somewhere a bit more pleasant. Not that there seemed to be many other options.

“So we need a plan that will give us access to any cart,” I surmised.

“Or a plan that doesn’t involve carts at all,” she countered.

Back to silence. I would’ve thought that the game would present us with something, especially considering that it was a legitimate quest, rather than something we scrounged up of our own accord.

“Thoughts on kidnapping a guard and slipping in that way?” I asked.

“Nyeh.”

“Convincing a guard to fall in love with you and offer you the armour in return for your hand in marriage?”

“Even more nyeh.”

“Dang.”

At last, an inkling of a plan started to form in my mind. I was hesitant to offer it up to Claire, but that wasn’t new. She could be a tough critic.

“You remember that time you shot Wright in the face with the supercharged electricity arrow?” I asked.

“Yep. It was rather memorable.”

“Agreed. How about you shoot one of those into the rear wall of the storage facility and then I slip in the front while their attention is drawn?”

Claire scowled. I’d come to realise that she wasn’t actually disapproving my plan; it was just her thinking face.

“Could work. Could fail. If my arrow doesn’t go through, or if they don’t hear it for some reason, you’d be in a fair chunk of trouble.”

“All true things. But I have faith in you.”

She considered that for a moment. Claire wasn’t the sentimental type usually — whether I ‘had faith’ or not was largely inconsequential. But now she seemed to at least place some stock in the idea.

“I mean, I’ve got nothing else coming to mind, so why don’t we work off your idea and see how we go? Can’t be worse than going in blind.”

I laughed uneasily, hoping she hadn’t just jinxed us.

**************

The first thing to go wrong happened almost immediately. It concerned our vantage point — the streets were all so narrow and difficult to navigate that we couldn’t find anywhere for Claire to shoot her shot from. Anywhere with the correct elevation and line of sight was always being patrolled by guards, leaving us in a serious predicament straight out of the gates.

“Can you shoot one of those homing arrows you do?” I queried.

“Afraid not. It needs to be a living target.”

“Lame.”

The next issue — once we decided that Claire would just have to temporarily perch herself on top of someone’s roof when the time came — was getting myself across to a reasonable entrance point without being spotted. The Asterians had done a good job of positioning the entrance such that I would have to fully expose myself for about a fifty-metre distance before I was in any kind of place to infiltrate the facility. I was quick, but this wasn’t anything like the Great Plateau, where the guards sat atop their big hill and watched the sun edge its way across the sky.

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These guys meant business.

Not only were they significantly better equipped, but they were just stronger. They’d clearly been drilled to perfection, never missing a beat in their inspections or falling asleep at guard posts. I was honestly getting worried that they would have specific countermeasures for the exact situation we were cooking up. If even a few guards stayed by the entrance when Claire made her presence known, it would make my part of the plan far more difficult.

But not impossible. If it goes bad, I’ll just activate every skill I can and blast through the lot of them.

I was hoping not to have to use the backup plan. Fighting Wright had taught me to be wary of using up my abilities all in one go — especially considering I didn’t have many passive buffs to balance me out.

Eventually, I picked a small supplies depot where the workers came to collect supplies for their daily needs. I could hang out in the shadows without anyone paying too much attention to me — most of the workers and guards passing through looked like they’d been worked to the bone. Some of them might have been alerted to the presence of an intruder, but none actually expected to be the one to find said intruder. There were too many other areas to hide in; too many other people around that could do all the searching.

Their low expectations would play to my advantage.

When Claire took her shot after the agreed-upon ten minutes, I almost disregarded it as a particularly loud thump of a hammer. Then I saw a band of mobilized troops heading toward the newest hole in their storage facility, and I realised it was my time to shine.

I equipped my gear. No one in the depot cared. I sprinted from my cover to the no-man’s-land between myself and the main entrance and [Dashed] across a portion of the track. The piled-up traffic gave me decent cover from the far side, but there was a shout of alarm behind me.

Shit. Twenty seconds in and I’m in trouble.

Luckily, whoever was roaring and howling about my transgressions was just a civilian — and the passing guards brushed them off as getting mixed up in the sudden action. I breathed a sigh of relief, sliding into the shadows of the facility.

Part one, done.

As we’d hoped, the guards at the main entrance had left their post to deal with the explosion. A couple cart drivers probably saw me slip by, but again, civilians weren’t my concern.

The inside of the facility was stark. It began with a wide, barren rectangle of open space. A few carts had set themselves up to be unloaded by a team of workers. Six large bays bordered a spacious path running down the centre of the space, totalling twelve bays. Some where enclosed, others were simply cordoned off with chains.

I darted to the nearest bay, slipping inside. A few workers were in there, unstacking and sorting boxes of stuff as though their workplace wasn’t in the midst of getting attacked. They were happy enough looking the other way, so I let them be.

If I were an invaluable set of armour, where would I hide?

The unsecured bays were the easiest to check, but also the least likely to have what we were looking for. I needed some way to get into the enclosed bays.

I ran through my skills, mentally cataloguing my options. It was a quick and rather underwhelming task — I had nothing that would put a crater in something the same way that Claire could.

Potions were out, too. A nuke potion would be overkill, and neither Claire nor Otto had come up with a handheld version just yet.

Think, Ollie, think. One of these guards must have a key on them, though if it’s a separate key for each bay—

No. The guards had spread from the area, meaning keys were out. Especially if I had to find enough to open every locked bay.

I was looking at the workers, trying to decide if I was evil enough to take a hostage and somehow use that leverage to get into the bays, when Claire appeared beside me.

“You’re useless!” she claimed. “How have you still done nothing! I’ve ran half the length of this district and created the perfect distraction just for you to sit around and watch the day go by!”

I shrank back a little. It was a little more complicated than that, but she wasn’t far off the mark.

“Yeah…I might’ve overestimated by capabilities a little. I can’t destroy stuff like you.”

She nocked an arrow and pulled me from the bay.

“That’s fine. I’ll blow stuff open; you go in and see if they’ve got what we’re looking for. And when those guards come back, you better be a goddamn powerhouse.”

I grinned and jogged along behind her.

“Just you wait. Start with the bay at the back — feels more likely.”

Claire promptly blew a hole in the door with a slightly less destructive spell that wasn’t on cooldown. I rushed in, thankful for the braziers lighting the room.

Ingots, tools, stacked empty boxes, jugs of…liquid, watering cans?

“Next!” I yelled.

My accomplice was one or two steps ahead of me. I heard the thump of another bay being brought down, then another. Whatever skill or skills she was using, they were perfect for this mission.

The second bay was more of the same. I exited, catching Claire’s eye and placing my arms in a cross. She kept firing.

I could hear the shouts of guards who’d worked out our ruse. Four were running along the rafters above us, almost in position to draw their bows and fire down on us. Another twelve or so were coming at us from ground level, their weapons already drawn.

All we could do was shoot faster and search harder. This would be our only chance to infiltrate this particular facility, and we couldn’t afford to waste it. The game had basically shoved us in this direction, pointing at the place and saying ‘Go here! Climb this! Destroy that!’.

We weren’t going to waste the opportunity.

I launched into the third bay, spinning like a cyclone and checking for any well-dressed mannequins or long sealed boxes similar to what we found in our driver’s cart. There was a pile of long boxes in the corner, covered in spindly cobwebs and enough dust and grit to build a peculiar kind of sandcastle.

Hearing the situation outside as it worsened, I decided to take the risk and spend some time cracking into the boxes. I brushed aside the debris and hauled the top box off the stack. {The Glass Cannon} was a useful tool for prying it open, making short work of the brittle metal clasps.

It was armour. Almost exactly the same as the set I’d found earlier, but definitely a good sign.

I pulled down the next crate, kicking the first to the side. This one had a large purple stamp on the side — a dragon with its open jaws clasped around some kind of fruit.

Fair enough.

My spear did its job once again. I yanked off the lid and tossed it to the side, peering down into the contents.

Armour. But not just any armour. I recognised this one — Tren had told me the price tag and I’d nearly collapsed in shock.

Two hundred and seventy-six thousand krad.

And the terms of the deal said I was allowed to wear it.

The Asterians weren’t ready for what came next.