Time to collapse: 5 days 22 hours

  We did an hour of driving, making progress towards the meeting place while Cascadia examined our new equipment. I agreed with Parson that the fishing rod was a stupid choice, but the other options had all seemed kind of dumb too, and at least the fishing rod was undeniably cool. It turned out to be extremely high tech and was more of a complete fishing system than a fishing rod. It was all very modular and there were four different main bodies, multiple rod extenders and reinforcers, several line types, a dozen different hooks, at least a hundred lures, and a bunch of miscellaneous accessories like bait boxes, nets, knives, tripods, and wrist support attachments. Everything packed nicely into a backpack and side-carry box set. The item description read like an ad and the AI voice was different than normal.

  NanoCast Elite Sport Fishing System

  The NanoCast Elite is a best in class, premium, luxury, complete fishing system, and is fully compliant with all GSFC sport fishing regulations. Furthermore, the system meets all NFL guidelines and is therefore eligible for use in all league competitions.

  The NanoCast Elite is specifically designed for enhancement zone fishing and can easily handle Drift to Surge class catches. In the hands of the right fisher, even Apex class catches are possible. Upgrades strongly recommended before attempting Leviathan class activities.

  In addition to the hyper-optimized but still aesthetically minded core components, the multitudinous accessories are thoughtfully designed, offering superior performance and an exceptional experience. The wrist support system allows strength enhanced anglers to fully utilize their capabilities and our self-sharpening, nanoSteel knife set ensures that even the toughest catches can be easily processed. The lure and bait set utilize proprietary NanoCast technology, outperforming all competitors. Even the multipurpose net demonstrates superior craftsmanship, utilizing advanced alloys, extensible design, adaptive ergonomics, and exclusively sourced, frostweaver silk, to deliver unparalleled excellence.

  Happy Casting, Angler.

  “That was an earful,” I said. “It sounds like, at the very least, we will be able to sell it for a lot of credits.”

  I had seen some crawlers try gathering type activities to support crafting or to make money, but it seemed to me to be a low yield endeavor. Still, it was worth investigating, and I would see what the codex had to say next time I looked at it.

  I decided to try driving with my Blackout Mode activated. It was a strange experience, feeling almost more like a video game as I steered the vehicle based on the camera feeds from my drones. The plus five to the Swarm Operator skill made an incredible difference to my abilities, and I found I could easily keep my two attack drones pacing the APC for vision while still sending my all purpose drone out for advance scouting and exploration.

  I found a neighborhood boss and pointed the APC in the direction.

  “So, do we want to just take out the boss or do you want to use your ability first?” I asked, as we approached. Parson spoke up.

  “You should use your ability. We are going to have trouble getting people to trust us enough to want to fight a major boss battle with us. We are going to need several tries more likely than not.”

  “Let’s do it then. I probably should have been using it all along to level it up.”

  We stopped near the boss chamber, which was an obvious setup for a ranged, turret style boss with lots of cover spots and some platforms to attack from above. We stowed the APC and Cascadia used her ability.

  Local Message: The crawler Cascadia is in your vicinity. Her location has been marked on your minimap. She says, “boss fight?”

  We waited for a few minutes before a small group emerged from one of the tunnels, moving cautiously. It was four crawlers, all level twelve, all armed with polearms. They were middle aged males and had a tough, weathered look about them. I guessed they were laborers, maybe farmers, before the dungeon. One of them stepped forward and raised a hand.

  “Greetings. I can see you are Cascadia. How did you send that message?”

  Cascadia stepped forward to meet him.

  “I am. I have a special ability, it sends a message to all crawlers in the vicinity.”

  “Seems like it might be dangerous. Letting everyone know where you are like that.”

  “Maybe. This is my first time using it, we’ll see.”

  “It’s just the three of you then?”

  “Just us, we thought we might work together to take down the neighborhood boss.”

  The men conferred in chat for a few seconds, eyes flashing.

  “I don’t think you need our help for this boss. And we don’t need your help either, we’ve taken down several neighborhood bosses like this. What’s your game?”

  “No game. Just trying to build some relationships.”

  “Oh yeah? Seems like something you struggle with a little. That’s a lot of skulls next to your name. How’d you get all those?”

  “I don’t think I need to explain how skulls work, the tooltip is quite clear.”

  “Yeah, it is pretty clear. Look, we don’t want any trouble. We are going to back away now. You can have this neighborhood boss if you want, but don’t even think about making a move on us. We are more powerful than we look.”

  We stood in silence as the group slowly backed away down the tunnel, keeping a watchful eye on us.

  “Nice,” I said. “Real smooth.”

  “Shut up, Gel. Let’s just kill this boss monster. We couldn’t have brought all of them with us anyway.”

  The boss fight was trivial, but Parson leveled up again, and we still got loot boxes. Cascadia decided to wait to try to engage with more crawlers until we had met with the other groups first, but she began using her Come Get Some ability whenever we were driving to level it up.

  We had gotten all of the big reward rooms that I had targeted except for a pet room, so I stopped going out of the way to reach them and planned to just hit any that we happened to pass by. If we didn’t find a pet room naturally by the last two days, then I would convince Parson and Cascadia to prioritize heading towards the nearest one until we found it.

  The rest of the day passed in mundane fashion, grinding and traveling. When we stopped for the day Cascadia and I were both level sixteen and Parson had reached thirteen. With all of the mammary mead barrels taking up space he had limited space in the APC to experiment, so he was participating in all the fights and leveling quickly.

  Our boss boxes had unremarkable gear; I got a hat that was far inferior to my helmet and Parson got some constitution enhancing lab pants which he put on. Cascadia just got another five hundred credits. My Frosty box was much more interesting; it contained my first upgrade module for my turret. Upgrade modules were different from item upgrades, and only certain items could hold upgrade modules. My drones had a few slots each, but my legendary turret had ten.

  Freeze Ray Turret Module

  This upgrade module will enhance a turret with the ability to fire freeze rays at a rate of 3 per 39 seconds. Each ray can freeze a target volume 1 cubic meter. Frozen targets will be released upon taking damage. Frozen targets will take 10% extra damage from the releasing attack. Frozen targets will be slowed for 30 seconds. Frozen targets will automatically thaw after 30 seconds. May not be effective in hot environments.

  I installed it right away and practiced freezing tables and chairs before going to sleep.

  The morning recap again failed to feature us but Cascadia didn’t seem to bothered as we started the fifth day of the second floor. She had a plan, after all.

  The fifth day went smoothly; we fought hordes of low level mobs, killed a neighborhood boss monster, and found one reward room. I had not been particularly interested in the Potted Plant room, but when I flew right by it with my drone I figured we might as well check it out. It had been a trap set-up and when we entered the area a mass of vines had sprung up, surrounding us. They had been slowly expanding and would have eventually crushed us, but Cascadia used her Burn-em Up pistol to light the whole mass on fire. She emptied and reloaded three cylinders of rounds in less than ten seconds. It had gotten uncomfortably hot but didn’t do any real damage to us. In addition to opening the reward room, Cascadia had gotten the Fired Up! achievement for killing a mob with elemental fire damage. The reward room wasn’t really a room at all, it was just a single potted plant that the mass of vines left after it died.

  The plant had no immediate effect but the description said that it would activate if placed in a personal space. It caused a problem though, because I couldn’t put the APC into storage if the plant was in it; apparently it counted as a living creature. We stopped by a tutorial guild to see if we could leave it with Jasper. Jasper didn’t care if we left the plant, but he did try to dissuade us from our city boss plan.

  “It’s just a terrible idea! Maybe on the later floors, when you might not be loc-“

  Zaap!

  “It’s just a bad idea. Please don’t do it…”

  Cascadia looked at him with curious eyes.

  “Why do you care so much?”

  “I’m…not really at liberty to discuss that. I’ve been reprimanded several times already for my communications with you on restricted topics and I’m at risk for reassignment. But you can believe I have your best interests at heart and fighting a city boss, even with a group, is not in your best interest.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  “Well, we haven’t gotten a group together yet. Maybe you’ll change your mind once you see what we are working with. We’ll check back before we pull the trigger, don’t worry. Now tell me, are there any complications with having too many cybernetic implants?”

  Cascadia’s Fired Up! achievement had given her a silver Crispy box that contained a few hundred rounds of ammo for her incendiary pistol and a cybernetic implant called an Ember Core. It was a chest implant that could technically be self-installed, but was very invasive. She hadn’t installed it yet, but if she did, she would be able to generate extreme amounts of internal heat, making her resistant or immune to many types of cold damage and environmental effects. There was some strong potential for interaction with my Endothermic Field ability.

  “Not really. If you do too many at once without medical guidance it can be dangerous, but that’s about it. They can be disabled by certain attacks, like your Static Scream, but they fail safe, so it won’t damage you. Replacing whole body parts could leave you vulnerable to such attacks, but those types of cybernetics usually have advanced shielding to at least minimize the effects. All cybernetics are hard to remove by yourself, so if you do decide to take up any more slots now, you’ll have to wait till at least the next floor to change them out if you find something better. I don’t know how you would install that yourself though, you have to get it past your rib cage and next to your heart.”

  “Well you’re about to find out, I want Gel to be able to freeze the room around me without freezing me too.”

  We watched with morbid curiosity as she took out the small implant. It was a glowing orange sheet of synthetic fabric lined with tiny, flat, power cells. It would apparently wrap around her heart if it got close enough. She removed her vest and formed four rings from her Pentarch Lash into a flexible, sharp, blade but used the last one to grab the implant, keeping it tucked on the underside of the blade. She placed the blade against her skin, right below her bottom rib. She extended the blade, piercing her skin. Blood seeped out of the wound as she continued to lengthen the blade, pushing the implant in and up towards her heart. She could control the rings like tentacles and she snaked them up the backside of her rib cage, waiting for the self-installation sequence to initialize.

  She must have scratched a lung on the way up because a small line of blood dripped from her mouth. Her health dipped to fifty percent as she wiggled the implant around, searching for the right spot. Her face was stoic but full of tension.

  I started to get worried right as the implant took. Her skin visibly rippled as the implant shifted around, wrapping her heart. She removed her hand from her insides and activated her Supercharged and Nanite Healing Burst abilities, tension easing from her body. The implant settled, leaving no external sign of its presence except for a faint, orange glow coming from her chest. It was invisible when she put her vest back on. She shuddered slightly as her health returned to full. I let out a breath and relaxed myself.

  “I guess it’s as simple as that,” Jasper said in a quiet voice.

  “Ugh, that felt awful. Sorry about the blood on your floor. Hey, I got the self-surgery achievement!”

  The achievement netted her a coupon for a free tier one or two item from the cybernetics emporium, whatever that was.

  “Allright, let’s get back to it.”

  We got updates from our potential companions and it seemed the other groups were coming together. I had pegged the location of Taron and his companion, and apparently professor Carrie was working with a group of almost thirty crawlers, so we were going to pick up Taron and head to them. It took another day of grinding, driving, and opening loot boxes with nothing but basic supplies and credits, but halfway through the sixth day we reached them.

  We met them outside of an undefeated neighborhood boss lair at Taron’s request. He looked much the same as when we last saw him except he now sported a fancy targeting visor. His companion was a young boy, he looked seventeen years old at most. He had two bandoliers with dozens of…..water balloons? The soft items had some sort of rubbery coating and appeared to be filled with liquid.

  The kids name was Timothy and he and Taron were both level eleven. He was short and thin, maybe not even fully grown yet. He had a disaffected air about him and as we walked up to meet them I caught a whiff of a smell that now felt like it came from an ancient era.

  “Are you wearing….body spray? And do you have gel in your hair??”

  The boy rolled his eyes at me and addressed Cascadia. He had a kind of posh accent that also somehow sounded uneducated.

  “It’s a good thing at least one of you understands the important things. Taron is cool but he doesn’t really get it either.” He gave Cascadia what I’m sure he thought was a disarming grin. I messaged Taron as everyone made short introductions.

  Gellen: Dude, this is the best you could find since we left you?

  Taron: He was alone, all of his party had died in a boss battle, and he was really scared. He acts cool but he is pretty much always on the edge of a breakdown. I feel bad leaving him alone and he’s scared of joining with other groups. He’s got some issues.

  Gellen: You feel bad? My man, you have three player killer skulls and I know how you got them.

  Taron: First off, fuck you. Second, this is why I need someone in charge who can tell me to do things like cut someone loose. I can’t make that kind of a call. Also, he’s not that bad. He’s really dumb but he’s a good kid. Kind-of. And he has a killer arm. His chem-balloons are really strong but they take a lot of skill.

  Gellen: Whatever I guess. As long as he can pull his weight. All 40 kilos of it.

  Taron: You’re not exactly a picture of masculine virility yourself. Just help us take out this boss and you’ll see. He’s been too scared to do a boss fight even though we could handle it easily.

  Timothy was explaining his balloons to us.

  “See these three finger pads? Each one gives the balloons a different effect. I can do sticky, acid, which is the best, or itchy powder, which is funny but not that good. I’m searching for some more upgrades.”

  Parson was very interested in the balloons and the kid promised to let him have one after the fight. Apparently he had a box that replaced used balloons every few hours.

  “Ok, let’s do this,” Cascadia said. “This is the perfect, not quite high stakes but still intense enough to put me in the zone, kind of fight I need to get my Golden Disc of the Ascendant Star Walker ability working.”

  She had been practicing the ability from her technosigilist runeplate but had yet to actually make one form. The pattern was complicated and had to be drawn very quickly or the ability would fail. Fortunately the ability didn’t go on cooldown after a failed attempt.

  We descended into the boss chamber, which was a large open chamber with a gigantic insect nest in the center.

  Cascadia: Let’s take it easy at the beginning. We want to see what these guys can do.

  The boss battle intro played as the giant insect queen peeked her head out of the nest.

  Gargantuan Bile Beetle Queen!

  Level 14 Neighborhood Boss.

  She’s big, she’s got claws, she’s got mandibles, and of course she’s got a bile shooter, but mostly she’s got lots and lots of babies. You’ll have to get through them to earn the privilege of trying to dig out the Queen. You probably should have brought a pickaxe for this one.

  The world unfroze and a swarm of dog sized beetles rose into the air and shot towards us. Cascadia and Taron started blasting with their rifles, Taron’s controlled, measured, style contrasting with Cascadia’s much more powerful but much less accurate gun. She had gone back to her “cool” look, with her miniature staff hanging out of her mouth. When the beetles were halfway across the hundred meter stretch, Timothy raised a knee and cocked his arm back with the easy familiarity of someone who played way too much ballsport growing up. He swung his arm forward and the balloon rocketed towards the beetles, exploding in a massive acid cloud. Dozens of beetles dropped to the ground as the acid dissolved their essential parts.

  Cascadia: Kid’s got a fucking arm.

  Parson: Yeah sure, but check out that acid cloud. That’s something else. These guys could be useful.

  Gellen: Cascadia’s got an arm, and we don’t need this prick to get an acid attack.

  Cascadia: I mean, I can throw, but not like that. Kid’s built different.

  I was annoyed at my companions but I had to focus as we engaged the surviving beetles, which exploded in bile when they died. Cascadia switched to her staff, whirling about and smashing any beetle that got close to her. Timothy would throw sticky balloons at groups of beetles, which would cover them in a thick goop that dropped them to the ground and stuck them in place for Taron to mop up. Parson was firing spikes but was distracted, examining Timothy’s chem-balloons in action. I forced my mask to activate Blackout mode and got to work with my drones. It was uncomfortable to be so close to enemies and unable to see them with my eyes, but with Blackout mode I could control all three drones directly while still making on the fly adjustments to my turret protocols. My robotics skill had reached eight and I could program complicated instructions now. I set it to use freeze rays anytime a mob got within five meters of me.

  A trio of beetles entered the threat range and the subroutine activated, freeze rays dropping all three of them before they could reach me. Cascadia swept over and smashed them, scattering frozen chitin everywhere.

  “Thats good shit,” she said as she twirled her way through another pair of beetles, crushing them. I zipped around with my drones, shocking and blasting the seemingly endless swarm. We were handling the beetles well, but they continued to pour out of the nest.

  “Hey Timmy!” Parson shouted over the battle noises. “Think you can hit the nest with one of those acid balloons from here?”

  Timothy had been looking around nervously but upon being addressed he put on a mask of indifference.

  “Sure. Easy.”

  “Great. Throw when I’m halfway there. Aim for the lower half of the nest. Gel, cover me.”

  He took off running towards the nest and I shadowed him with my two attack drones, fending off flying beetles. When he hit fifty meters Timothy took a skipping hop step and hurled a balloon. It arced through the air, slamming into the base of the giant nest. Parson reached the nest and scrabbled up the side to reach the spreading acid cloud. He stretched his hand out to touch it, sending a ripple of cascading chemical reactions through the green cloud. The cloud expanded rapidly, taking on a deeper color and boiling briefly before thickening and falling with a splash to coat the side of the nest. Parson was covered in caustic liquid but with his new lab coat he was immune, and jogged casually back towards us. The acid was killing many of the beetles as they emerged and we quickly cleared the room of the small mobs.

  The side of the nest steadily degraded as the acid ate away at it. We could see collapse was imminent as something began digging at the wall from the inside.

  Taron: Are we going to get a Cascadia special for the finish or do I need to get out my concussion grenades?

  Cascadia: Oh we are going to get a special. I’ve got something I’ve been wanting to try out.

  On cue, the queen burst out of the side of the nest, showering clay everywhere and shooting a huge ball of bile in our direction. It was covered in acid and its health bar was already half gone. Everyone scattered to the side except for Cascadia who dashed back to the wall. She jumped at the wall and jammed the staff into the corner between wall and floor as the bile ball exploded in front of her. The staff bent back almost into a U-shape and she slapped her adhesion disc onto the wall before the staff snapped back, launching her forward. As she flew towards the boss she spun to face the wall behind her. Golden lines appeared as her fingers traced a complex, circular pattern. Twenty meters from the boss the lines flickered, and then snapped together. She pulled her hands out, stretching the shield to its maximum size and leaving it behind her in the air.

  “That’s right!” she screamed as she activated her wristblade and torpedoed into the boss's carapace, scoring a deep hit and grabbing onto a piece of shell. The boss moved to snap at her but she activated her Gravity Coupling skill, jerking back with the force of three g’s and ripping a section of carapace away. She was slammed into her disc shield and she absorbed the contact with her unnaturally strong legs, storing energy before releasing the gravity coupling and launching herself back at the boss, scoring another series of hits before she jerked herself back again, moving too fast for the boss to mount an effective counter attack. She rubber banded back and forth this way, striking deeper each time until she broke through the carapace completely. The boss’s health bar plummeted as Cascadia disappeared into the monster and attacked it from the inside.

  A few seconds later the world froze and the word Winner! appeared. The world unfroze and the boss crashed to the ground. A few seconds later Cascadia punched a new hole into the carapace and came flying out. She deactivated her gravity coupling as she came to a skidding stop in front of us, completely covered in beetle guts.

  “In retrospect, I should have waited for that move until I get a better way to clean myself off.”

  And with that, Cascadia and I disappeared.