The Losers saw the Imperials examine the remains of the Evolved Stalkers from their hiding place, no more than a couple of hundred feet apart. Despite their weird and varied appearances, most of their enemies' voices sounded oddly human.

  Jenna shifted points into Mind and Linguistics, and in a few minutes, she had already learned their idiom.

  “…these beasts’ spirit cores have already been removed. Boral warned us about your duplicity. You Fluids can’t be trusted. You are hogging cores before they can be shared with others. You will have to answer for this.” The speaker was a single giant eye, two feet in diameter, floating in midair, with several tentacles emerging from it.

  “If we had wanted to steal the cores, we could have done so easily, and none of you would have noticed. Your people stole the cores; you are playing the outraged victim to cover it. Only a Committed would dare to try such an obvious ruse. Your minds are as constipated as your bodies.” The so-called Fluid invader was vaguely humanoid, but its limbs extended and retracted from its trunk, and its skin changed color and texture even as it spoke.

  “I will not have my integrity questioned by a spineless coward who is even afraid of taking evolution to its rightful end.” The discussion was escalating, and it seemed as though things could turn ugly.

  “Do not talk to me of endings or beginnings, you solidified piece of turd. Evolution is an end in itself. You are the one who is afraid, taking comfort in your static, worthless shape. You are too dumb to realize you have impaired yourself forever by locking your shape into that ridiculous form you have chosen.” Dangerous-looking quills had begun sprouting from the Fluid’s skin as its anger grew.

  “Enough, both of you.” The new speaker, unlike the other two, mainly looked human. She was a beauty with Mediterranean features and a soft, but commanding voice. Her only concession to weirdness was a pair of dragonfly wings sprouting from her back. She wore practical clothes suited for trekking. “You are not here as members of the House of Commitment or the Church of Fluidity. You are here as imperial citizens. If you keep making trouble, I will ask the Emperor to remove you both from the dungeon.”

  “You mean you will ask your brother?” the floating eye replied snidely.

  “No, I will ask Eleazar the Third, Ruler of the Old Empire, Hierophant of the Unfocused Path, and leader of this expedition, chosen by both Governance and Necessity themselves, who also happens to be my brother,” she answered coldly.

  “Think carefully before you reply, Umbess. I have invoked my Analyzing intent. If I detect even a hint of disdain in your voice when you speak his name, you will answer personally to him, just as your friend Lryx did before he disemboweled him.”

  Umbess chose prudently not to reply.

  Jenna had expertly distributed her points between Mind and Spirit, trying to gauge the social interactions of these strange people. In her mind, imperial culture took shape as a massive puzzle composed of pieces of four different colors.

  The House of Commitment and the Church of Fluidity were the main opposing forces, represented by red and blue pieces that could not touch.

  The Unfocused Path had pieces in neutral white that served as a buffer between the other two factions, allowing the jigsaw to be completed. These pieces were fewer in number and smaller in size, and their only strength lay in balancing the other two.

  The fourth type of pieces was extremely scarce and multicolored. They did not seem to fit with any of the others, but if they existed, they had to be a necessary part of the puzzle.

  That was fine by her. Jenna didn’t enjoy putting puzzles together, but she loved to unravel them.

  “How did they get here so fast?” Bob whispered to her. I thought they needed eighteen hours to make a complete turn”

  “They move in intervals, stopping periodically to collect the cores and treat their wounded,” Jenna explained.

  “The rest periods last for two hours, after which they march quickly through the next part of the forest, killing everything in their path. This allows mobs to grow in power and expand their spirit cores. I think we met them during one of those forced marches.”

  The Imperials quickly began constructing an impromptu camp, using their evolutionary powers to complete it in just a few minutes. The floating eye cast a hovering force field that served as a ceiling. At the same time, the ground was transformed into makeshift hammocks, where six injured Imperials lay, awaiting the healers.

  Jenna estimated that one third of the Imperials were continuously mutating, another third were unchanging monstrosities, and the final third were primarily composed of almost-human Imperials with few mutations.

  Jenna watched as two particularly fierce-looking Imperials led away Useful Pob, as he carried his coffer in both arms. One of the Imperials was a Committed, a six-armed humanoid clad in stony armor. The other was a Fluid, a spider-like being that occasionally shifted its shape, adopting various insect-like forms.

  The humanoid shoved Pob roughly forward.

  There was no love lost between the two guards. Each faction feared the other would seize the cores for its own use. Finding defeated mobs with their cores already extracted had clearly reinforced those fears.

  “How do you want to pull this off?” Billy asked her.

  “We're going to create a distraction and steal it right under their noses. They already mistrust each other, so it will be easy to manipulate them. We just need to wait until they start the hunt again.”

  The Losers remained in hiding for another hour as the forest reconstituted itself, and new beasts replaced those that had already been harvested. Jenna grew nervous as a herd of two-headed, raptor-like predators approached, foraging for food.

  Fortunately, the Imperials chose that moment to restart the hunt. They formed a line, and one of the semi-human hunters unleashed a low-strength sonic blast aimed at the entire herd, taunting them into charging the formation.

  “Your turn, Billy,” Jenna whispered at her shinobi-clad boyfriend. Billy carefully selected one of the largest raptors and threw a shuriken at its back while it was distracted by two hunters. The creature didn’t seem to notice the hit, but it was enough to transfer a Corpse-Camping charge to it.

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  The hunters took down the beast in under ten seconds, only to watch it rise again—slightly larger and much angrier.

  You have spent one Corpse-Camping Charge. You do not receive any achievement points back.

  The scene repeated itself over and over as Billy continued feeding more charges to the beast. “We must remain hidden, Jenna,” he whispered to his girlfriend. “If the raptor sees me, it will attack me instead of them.”

  Fortunately, Billy’s current Shinobi form, along with Bob’s shadowcraft perks and Jenna’s ability to shrink her body, made it easier for them to approach their target without being detected. They crawled slowly toward the area where the two Imperial bodyguards stood guard over Useful Pob.

  Jenna could hear corpse-camping charges being spent through the blood link she shared with the rest of the Losers. Each time the message blinked, the Imperials' cries of dismay were clearly heard.

  From the Imperial point of view, the situation quickly degenerated from a comical oddity to an incredibly dangerous situation. The beast already towered over twice its original size, and its shape had started to mutate, granting it new powers.

  Jenna winced as the raptor spewed acid, which covered the mutating Imperial who had gotten into a fight with Umbess.

  The Imperial screamed as the acid consumed its quills, skin, and flesh, leaving only a mound of slime. The scream sounded very human.

  She saw the Emperor’s sister soar into the air on her dragonfly wings. She went to look for reinforcements. They had to do this now.

  The losers seized the chaos and confusion, moving closer without being noticed until they were just thirty feet from Pob.

  Jenna noticed both guardians were pointedly watching each other, ignoring the sounds of chaos and carnage that flooded the forest.

  Jenna observed the two guards, trying to determine which one had weaker mental abilities. The hulking brute seemed like the obvious choice. She allocated as many points as she could into Spirit, Connection, and Drain. Then, she carefully and subtly began to ease her way into the Imperial’s mind. One false move, and it would detect someone tampering with its thoughts.

  “Now, Bob,” she whispered through the mental link, and forcefully drained the Imperial’s mind:

  Spirit -2 Perception -2 Paranoid -2

  She felt her own Spirit stats increase as she leeched the Imperial’s. At that same time, Bob made another impossible Wind Kisses the Ball hit, causing one of the cores they had obtained from the Evolved Predators to rise into the air and softly hit the top of the other Imperial’s head, following a descending trajectory.

  The Imperial believed that something had fallen onto its head from one of the trees. Upon realizing it was a Spirit Core that had struck it, it picked it up from the ground, held it in one of its insect-like pincers, and examined it with fascination. Where had this come from?

  At that exact moment, the other guard, his already latent paranoia blown into overdrive by Jenna, turned around and beheld the whole scene.

  “I knew it!” it screamed at the top of its lungs. “The whole fight outside is just a distraction, you are stealing the cores”. It charged its insectile companion with such force that both flew out of the improvised tent.

  “Now it's our chance,” she hissed at the other two Losers. They ran into the tent to the surprise of Pob, who was still holding the inscription-covered wooden coffer in which the cores were stashed.

  “We are here to help,” she quickly said in Beli, using Connection and Transfer to adjust Pob’s size just enough so that he could free himself from the chain around his neck.

  They quickly escaped from the tent, steering clear of the area where the two bodyguards were still locked in a fierce battle, and sought refuge in the forest.

  Pob held the coffer tightly against his chest as they ran, fully aware of the value of those damned cores.

  While they fled, they caught sight of two swift figures soaring overhead to their left. The Emperor and her sister had returned to handle the situation.

  “What’s the plan now?” Bob asked.

  “We complete the turn. One more hour of counterclockwise travel, and we’ll reach the rift gate. Then we can return to Belona with Pob and the cores,” replied Jenna.

  “Guys, I’m still feeding charges to the corpse-camped raptor, but he has stopped dying. I think they’ve managed to subdue him without actually killing him,” Billy said, worry etched on his face.

  “That’s not good news. Some of the Imperials can fly. If they manage to track us, I doubt we’ll reach the rift gate before they catch up,” Jenna responded, adjusting her stats to enhance her hearing.

  “Damn, I can hear them. They're searching for us. One of them has picked up Pob’s scent and is following it.”

  “Let’s hurry, and pass me a core,” said Bob. His eyes had the glazed expression he got when he was designing a new perk. He focused on the core and then tossed it onto the top of a tree with one of his incredible Palooga shots.“I have used Tastecraft to imprint Pob’s scent in the core. I have long suspected Tastecraft was not limited to cooking. Thank god I was right. This will buy us a few minutes.”

  They started running as fast as they could. Whenever Jenna heard the Imperials getting closer, they repeated their trick, throwing them off the trail until they found the scented core. It only bought them a few extra minutes, but those moments proved crucial in helping them shake off their pursuers. Finally, the rift gate appeared at the edge of their vision field.

  Boral the Enduring was standing in front of it.

  “Seems I get to kill the servant as well as the master,” it said as soon as he saw Pob, still clutching the coffer filled with cores.

  “I knew you would eventually pass through this spot. I will ensure no one finds your corpses or the cores. I will put them to better use than that moronic would-be emperor.”

  Jenna suddenly realized that Boral did not know she could understand Imperial. He was not addressing them; he was monologuing—true prime villain material.

  “Jenna, if you can’t think of something, I think we are done. I don’t believe we can take this guy, especially not with the few minutes we have before the others arrive,” said Billy.

  “I already have a plan B, Billy. I didn’t want to use it because it may strand us on Earth, but there’s no alternative now.” She summoned the Compendium into her mind and used it to locate the extradimensional coordinates of the Icosahedron, a trick that all Immortals could perform. Even Postulants could manage it.

  “Shadow Gate, Bob,” she ordered as she filled him with magical affinity points and imprinted the dimensional coordinates into his mind. Much like he had done when they tracked Discovery, Bob summoned a gate using the nearby shadows cast by a tree. The passage was so long that they could not see the light at the end of it.

  Boral grew alarmed when he realized they had a way out and charged at them, but he was built for endurance, not speed.

  Bob and Billy entered the gate. Just as Pob was about to step through, he turned around and addressed Boral in perfect Imperial, surprising everyone present.

  “Remember the face of this servant, Boral. It will be the last thing you see. For Vlas.”

  Then both he and Jenna entered the gate as it closed behind them. They were plunged down an endless toboggan ride through the night, a small light twinkling at the end of their journey.

  The light gradually intensified until it transformed into another gate, and they rushed through it. Their speed was so great that they all tumbled to the floor upon arrival. The lids of the coffer swung open, spilling hundreds of cores onto the wet floor of the room where they had landed.

  Jenna slowly raised her head and found herself in a bathroom. Dignity looked at them, open-mouthed; she was having a bath when they arrived. Bob, Billy, and Pob looked away, embarrassed.

  “Nice bath you’ve got here, Dignity,” Jenna told her flippantly. “Could I ask you afterwards for some of that shampoo?”