The hangar doors whirred as they lowered into a ramp, slowly revealing the extent of the enemy forces. Hundreds of imperial marines locked behind barricades and hastily-crafted sandbag walls. They held their fire as they watched the mouth of my ship open wide, waiting for the perfect moment to burst their damage all at once, but as the ramp slammed down, it revealed to them a small squad of T-34/85 main battle tanks.

The engines roared, and the tanks shot out.

The imperial soldiers fired back with laser weaponry, but each tank had its own LMD, its own glowing manawall shields, and Jessie's squad of tanks drove right through the barricades and over the tops of soldiers and down the long hall of the enemy ship.

The way was clear.

I raised my knife-arm high and unleashed a war cry.

And a thousand echoes behind me as we broke into a run down the length of the ship.

The inside was large, and everything oversized, including the halls that were tall enough to house two-story buildings and wide enough to sail small ships through. Some parts held doorways that branched off to other rooms, and several squads of our forces split off to secure our advance.

We found resistance again roughly half a kilometer down the spinal hallway of the ship, a crossroads of sorts. Jessie's tank squads had posted up on the branching roads, defending the path forward, and around the corner, a hail of ferocious gunfire. Bullets sparked off manashields, passing rockets erupted around, and the tanks were locked in place.

Jessie popped her head out of her tank and let us know the situation.

The left path snaked around and headed to the Delta-S cannon. Right led to the engine core. And straight ahead was the imperial throne room.

This was the crossroads.

We had planned for this, and our small army split into their designated teams.

Assault Team A was to find and kill Marianna.

Assault Team B was to destroy the Delta-S cannon.

Assault Team C was to disrupt ship systems.

The teams split off. With our magically-enhanced marines, our teams poured around the corner and into the halls, unleashing storms of gunfire and spells to drive back the defenders.

And I charged onward.

Behind me, Vil and the Heroes, and behind them, hundreds of our most capable four-man squads, each trained and built to mimic the heroes themselves.

We arrived at a series of stairs and a group of elevators, everything fancy and high tech like some sort of resort hotel, with wide-spanning windows that showed us space around and the state of the battle. Lights flashed, autocannons sent dotted lines at passing Spacer ships, and missiles fire back. There were elevators here, but when we tried to summon them, the entire ship shook and rumbled with a deep explosion from elsewhere in the ship, and the power flickered.

The hero party joined me as I referred to a ship directory on the wall. They also sported their ultimate-level armor, colored in the brown and black of the resistance.

"How far are we?" I asked.

The mage closed his eyes as he used the spell. "Not far. I can sense Marianna no further than another kilometer."

Vil looked at the directory beside me. "It looked like a straight shot there, but," he pointed at the map, "I would expect ambushes here." The hallway that led us to Marianna cut through large, suspiciously arena-shaped rooms. She probably put her strongest captains there.

I covered my ear and spoke through my internal comms. "Give me a sitrep on the other teams."

The Card King replied. "Assault Team C is working through the ship with little resistance, but the core systems are all spread out. The ship is huge, Redrim. Assault Team B is bogged down and making slow progress toward the weapon housing."

A nearby explosion shocked us, and we dropped down for cover. Shouts rang out with echoes, and our squads returned fire. It boiled over into a firefight, and we took cover behind the steel barrier.

The Card King spoke again through the comms. "Redrim, we're detecting rising Delta-S levels within the ship."

"Fuck. I thought they couldn't fire again until it cooled down."

"It was probably bad intel, Redrim. Don't worry. With the progress we're making, we'll kill it in no time."

I peeked over the steel barrier and saw groups of imperial soldiers charging in, but these weren't your regular career space soldiers. These were squads of tanks, healers, and fighters as any other adventuring party.

This would be a fight of attrition. A fight I didn't have time for.

"Hold them off," I ordered. "We're moving ahead."

The officer hit me with a quick salute and relayed the order.

I spoke to my friends. "We don't need an army to face her directly. Just us is more than enough."

"Ah, Redrim," said the knight. "Always with the quick-yet-inspiring speeches!"

We hurried up the spiraling stairs, careful to keep low from stray bullets and spells, trying not to lose balance as the ship vibrated and shook, and soon we reached the top floor. The fight was now far, far below us--streams of gunfire and flashes of spells--and here, the hallways held windows that wrapped the ceilings, showing us the extent of the war outside.

We ran through, the battle now a muffled noise to us, and soon we arrived at the first room.

It was indeed an arena, set up exactly in the way a mid-boss battle room should look like, and--of fucking course--there stood the first mid-boss.

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A dragon.

Yes, a dragon. In a spaceship. Somehow Marianna found one that fit. A dragon that looked alarmingly like the one we fought in the forest, with the glowing scales and the angry roar and the hot fire breath.

The knight grinned to me. "Well, fellow knight. This is where we split off, it seems, almost as if fate herself had decided it!"

The dragon stomped and roared again, and the room shook from the force.

"So it would seem," I said.

The healer scolded him. "It'd be better to wait. This shouldn't take long."

The mage shook his head and spoke with that usual cool-guy tone. "Nah. Since Redrim is under pressure to defeat the final boss before time runs out, he'll need to allow his comrades to distract every challenge that appears until he ends up facing her alone in a climactic final duel."

"Aye," said the archer. "Makes sense to me."

The dragon galloped over--wings tearing through the ceiling and the floor, and the knight thrust his spear--a burst of power slapped against the dragon, forcing it back, wincing at the sting.

"Thanks, guys," I said. "I'll see you once I'm back."

The knight grinned. "It's your main quest, after all."

I nodded to Vil, he nodded back, and as the hero party clashed against the dragon, we slipped through the far door and further down.

Soon we reached the next room, and after bursting through the doorway and inside, we found the next mid-boss.

And I groaned dramatically like a teenager.

It was fucking Ai-Gee again. I could tell it was him because who else would take on the shape of a Trash Knight to face me here, of all places?

"OBI IMSI," he shouted. "As you can SEE, I have DISCARDED my HUMANITY, and I have become FULLY MACHINE." His arms clacked into sword edges, and he aimed one at me. "This is IT, Imsi. This is where I'll put you down for GOOD, and once I do, Marianna will reward me with YOUR BODY." He burst into laughter.

I looked at Vil, and he looked at me, and he shrugged. "Goddamnit, Redrim. Do I really need to clean this up for you?"

"Please?" I asked. "I really don't like this guy."

Vil smirked. "Consider it a favor."

"Cool," I smiled back.

"HEY," Ai-Gee shouted. "WHERE are you GOING?"

I scurried off to the side, walking with weird steps as though I had just shit myself, and Ai-Gee stomped over--

And was tripped by a wind shear.

"OBI IMSI," he shouted. "Get back and FIGHT ME, you COWARD."

I slipped out the door, and behind me, I could hear him grunting and talking shit as Vil fought him.

But now I was alone.

I ran down the length of the hallway. Space outside flashed with another nuke setting off, and the ship rumbled again.

My earpiece crackled to life. "Redrim," said the Card King. "Team B has arrived at the Delta-S Cannon housing."

"Destroy it," I said.

"That's the thing," he said back. "Nothing's there."

"What?"

"The core of the weapon is missing, Redrim. Either that or our intel is completely off."

I cursed under my breath. "What about the Delta-S levels?"

"Still rising."

"Find it," I said. "Search and destroy anything that even looks like it could blow up a planet."

"Yes, sir."

I continued on, certain that there were no more boss rooms, hoping that the next place would be the final battle, but to my dismay, I realized I had somehow miscounted. There was indeed another arena ahead, and from the look of the map, the very last one.

I burst through.

And here, in this featureless concrete room, stood a solitary woman with a wide grin and a meter-long black dildo with spikes on end. Red skin. Wispy tail. Succubus horns.

It was Kisk, and she tapped the head of her rubber dick on her open palm as she waited patiently for me to catch my breath. "Hello, Imsi."

"Kisk."

"It was pretty clever," she said. "Refusing to tell your crew about your little tricks."

"I knew you were there, watching," I said. "And I knew I couldn't trust you."

"But I was right, wasn't I?

"What's your game here?" I asked. "Are you trying to play both sides? If you want to help me, then stand aside."

She lowered her eyes and smiled softly. "Well, now, I can't exactly do that, can I? I only respect power, and all that I've seen from you in this form was weakness. Your only strength was your friends, but now you're alone." Her mouth stretched with a demon's grin, and she bore her fangs. "You're alone and disgustingly weak."

Dispenser Mode activated.

Bulwark Mode activated.

My arms folded out to form a magic-dispensing machine gun and a bulwark shield, and from my internal LMD, I loaded purification rounds.

I aimed at her. "Sorry, Kisk. We've had fun, but I'm not doing this for me. I'm doing this for them."

She laughed.

I pulled the trigger.

She vanished into black smoke, into subspace, and then I heard it. Not her, but the swing of her black rubber dick as it cut through the sound barrier and boomed throughout.

I rolled just in time, looked up to see a black blur slicing down at me, and I raised my shield to block it.

The spikes punched through the shield, and she yanked it off me.

I fired again.

She vanished.

Hmmm-click.

+1 Purification smoke grenade.

I slammed it down at my feet, and a burst of white smoke shot out around.

I looked for the effect, and I heard her cough behind me. I wheeled around to see a glittering silhouette of her body in the smoke, half hunched over, gagging at the spell.

I aimed and fired again--

And felt a foot slam into my back, throwing me across the room. I tumbled and slid to the far wall, confused as to what had happened, but as I stood and looked ahead, I saw the extent of my misfortune.

There were two demons. No, three. Four. All obnoxiously hot women with succubus bodies, each carrying weaponized sex toys and taunting grins.

"Is this the one, sister?" said the one with long blonde hair. "He's much shorter than you made him out to be." She carried a long chain of anal beads like a whip, and she snapped it in the air for effect.

Beside her, another succubus with a tasteful afro and a vibrator for whatever reason. Unsure how it could be used as a weapon, but I was unnerved regardless. "He better be huge, sis."

"Hugely disappointing," said the third. "Doesn't look like there's anything between his legs."

A laugh hit us from above. A deep, grumbling, proud laugh that had somehow encompassed the entire room, coming seemingly from everywhere at once, and it spoke. "It is not the dick on the outside that makes a man."

It was the Gimp King's voice! His sadomasochist telepathy traveled through us each. I felt his presence nearby, a sort of static electricity that filled the air, empowering during the length of his sentence, "It's the dick on the inside that counts!"

And the room erupted as though a meteor just crashed in through the ceiling.

Dust poured. Pebbles dripped from above, and from the smoke, the monstrous figure of the Gimp King rose like a sexual god. His bulge throbbed triumphantly.

Kisk grinned at him with half-lidded eyes. "No, this is the one."

The other succu-girls wooed at him with the exact kind of cute sass one would expect from millennia-old succubi of the demon realm.

Kisk aimed her black dildo at him.

The Gimp King aimed the Cock of the Cosmos back.

"Redrim," he rumbled. "Humor me and allow me this fight. This is surely the climax of our... casual encounters."

Kisk purred. "Let him leave, girls. I've found a new hobby." She bit her lip up at the Gimp King, and he smoldered back down at her.

Unsure if they were gonna actually fight or just fuck each other like animals, I decided to just walk out.

The door clicked shut behind me—I heard questionable fucking/fighting sounds muffled within--and I continued on. The final room was right ahead, and here, the floors changed from metallic grey to luxurious carpet. It seemed more like a palace hallway here than an otherworldly spaceship.

My comms crackled. "Redrim!" It was the Card King again. "We've pinpointed the Delta-S signal."

"Where is it coming from?"

"The throne room."

"Wait, why would she move that big ass weapon there?"

"Well, that's the thing, Redrim," he said. "I don't think the weapon is what we thought it was."

"What?"

"What we found was a power-amplifying crystal. It could multiply the strength of any spell cast through it exponentially."

"So the real source of the Delta-S signal is..."

"Marianna herself."

I pushed open the doors, and I was met with a massive throne room adorned in white and gold. There in the center, Marianna lounged on her throne. Legs crossed, head resting on her hand. She perked up at the sight of me.

"Finally," she said. "We can finally get this over with."