The only two true combat-Classers on the crew surged forward, blade and staff leading the way. Emerald, Jenny Mae, and Heath fell in behind them. Every hour they had spent drilling different formations had prepared them for this moment. If anyone had been watching, they would be mistaken for real delvers.

  Spells and phase shots leapt towards their enemies, crunching metal the only reactions from the drones.

  Heath gripped his pistol but didn’t bother shooting. He wasn’t as good as the rest of them, and he had a job of his own. Gone were the days where a single [Shield] took his whole mana pool to block a blow. Pinpoint applications stopped the worst of the return fire. Only once did he need to fully [Shield] Ekaterina, when one of the drones pulled out an honest-to-gods flamethrower.

  Then they were at the door and a fight became a slaughter.

  They had a year of experience fighting in caves, the majority of rank one dungeons favoring narrow passageways. The halls of a madman’s castle were not so different.

  Copperfield’s saber slashed out. The original had been replaced once already to account for his increased level, the Swashbuckler’s skill in using it improving alongside. Lucky he had worn it out on Mosaic station.

  Metal, oil, and other things Heath wasn’t stopping to identify, splattered into the walls as more drones threw themselves into the fray. Alone, Copperfield would have been overwhelmed in moments.

  Elemental lances flew forward, skewering multiple drones at a time. Occasionally, when one was particularly tough or dangerous, it simply exploded. Ekaterina had joined their crew for the chance to advance, and the Wizard had pursued that goal with all the zeal of a child cursed with extraordinary siblings.

  Her repertoire had grown beyond blasts of undirected magic. Granite spikes grew out of the metal and stone of the castle, skewering hardier opponents. Flashing lights and other [Cantrips] ruined sensor readings, giving the others time to capitalize. Attackers slowed as she sucked away their speed and momentum with a trick of force magic. When the crystal on her staff blazed white, Heath covered his eyes with both arms. The light would coalesce into a laser that would cut down anything in their path, and blind anything watching. One of their better dungeon finds.

  Even their combined Skills might not have been enough. But as the crew forced their way deeper, they came upon sites of existing wreckage. Bars of metal that had crushed smaller drones. Sheets and spikes that had squished others against a wall. An area of the floor covered in some sort of clear goo, the drones further back forced to clamber over those that were trapped in the sticky morass.

  “What in the drowned hell…” Heath trailed off at the sight.

  “I had some time,” Jenny Mae said next to them.

  If they survived, Heath had a lot of questions.

  A loud, confident tread brought their progress to a shrieking halt. From around the next corner came the Cyber.

  “It’s not alive!” Jenny Mae shouted.

  Heath hadn’t needed that caveat to start attacking. Neither did his crew. Before Jenny Mae’s shout had finished, four phase shots and a spike of hardened ice were flying through the air.

  The Cyber kept walking forward, one arm unfolding into a shield. Their shots caused it to warp, and the ice spike made it through, but none of their attacks hit anything vital.

  It was a long hallway, but they had closed the distance before Heath could do much more than blink. Or maybe that was the rage, rising up at the being in front of him. Heath didn’t care if it wasn’t really alive, he was going to kill it.

  He bolted forward, ducking under Emerald’s arm, the only one who had anticipated the action.

  Ignoring the shouts and his own better judgment, Heath grabbed the truncheon hanging off his hip and leapt forward.

  His first blow struck the shield like a gong, clanging in his ears and jolting him to the shoulder. On the second, he activated the electrify function. 200,000 volts surged into the Cyber.

  It staggered, dropping the arm just enough as it processed the energy.

  Heath did it again. This time, making contact with the thing’s shoulder. Then again. And again. By the time all five charges had been delivered, the Cyber was on the floor.

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  That didn’t stop Heath from continuing, each blow raining down like a comet as he put his whole body into the strikes. When his arms started shaking, he pulled out his pistol. Point blank phase shots were usually messy.

  Whatever this thing was it didn’t have any blood or viscera. Each phase slug punched a hole into the inner workings, revealing burnt out circuitry and metal. Heath kept going until you couldn’t tell there had once been the shape of a human at all.

  He stepped back, panting. Looking over his shoulder, the whole crew was staring, wide-eyed as he vented the last days of frustration.

  “Later,” he promised. “We’re not done yet.”

  “Damn straight,” Copperfield said. He surged back to the front and the group picked up the pace.

  No part of Heath felt regret for the outburst. The Shaman would be getting a dose of the same, just as soon as they found him.

  Jenny Mae’s terse directions brought them through the maze. “[Navigation] and [Perfect Recall],” she explained, “turn left and we’ll cut around. It worked and the group arrived at another door, this one jammed open with a few well-placed blocks in the hatch mechanism.

  What they found inside tore Heath between wanting to use his next Skill point on a Berserker’s [Rampage] and fleeing in the opposite direction. The Loon was there, but it was… well, he didn’t have the words for how horrible it felt.

  Especially when a wave of anguish radiated out from his [Ship Link]. Metal spikes were driven through the Loon, breaching the hull and shoving something inside. He could feel the Loon trying to resist, even as that resistance was easily overcome.

  The lingering stench of burnt metal and leaking maris oil perfumed the air, like the very worst kind of dockyards, where ships were chopped to pieces and patchworked back together by Shipwrights that had been kicked out of any reputable station.

  That wasn’t all. Slabs of the outer hull had been peeled open, flaying the Loon to expose the mana matrix inside. A matrix which now had pockets of green and black rot, poisoned veins spreading deeper into the ship.

  Mag clamps held the ship in place, while bands of jagged spikes encircled in three places, pressing with enough force to require a reaction, not enough to pierce the hull and natural shielding.

  It was a torture chamber, designed to break its occupant open so a scavenger could feast on the entrails.

  All that he absorbed in the moment before his attention refocused on the figure standing amidst the carnage in the open hatch to the Loon’s cargo bay.

  “I’m impressed.” The Shaman said. His long locs slapped his back, the rasp of wire across armor accompanying each step as he strolled forward. No fear or anger crossed his face. If anything, he looked like he was bestowing a genuine compliment. Though it was hard to tell. One eye had been replaced with a glowing red orb, which swirled around in a nauseating cycle.

  In his hand was a staff. A mirror to Ekaterina’s, but where hers was carved with runes and topped with a crystal, the Shaman’s was covered in wires and banded in small display screens, flickering between images too fast to track. From the top, circuit boards dangled on chains, each radiating an aura of danger that overlapped with the Shaman’s own. There were crystals embedded along the sides, each infused with the green light that invaded every corner of the fortress.

  “How did you get so far into the web before triggering the mines?”

  Jenny Mae answered for the group, with a single shot aimed at the Classer’s head.

  “Ah ah ah.” He held up his hand and intercepted the blow, some sort of necrotic ability ripping the energy apart before it could reach. “None of that.”

  That was not ideal. But Heath refused to give up. They had beaten a fucking kaiju, by the Huntress. They could take down one overconfident Classer.

  “Now, children. Why not tell me what I want to know? You’re going to die here. Since you broke my lieutenant in your hissy fit, I think it makes sense to replace him. A whole squad of lieutenant,s in fact. If you answer my questions, I’ll make sure you’re dead before I start the process.”

  Heath spent the moment realizing what his mom had meant when she told him hatred was a poison. It seeped through his whole body, until every atom from his heart to his toes was bent towards the same purpose. The monster in front of him was going to die.

  He opened his mouth to spit out his defiance, damn the consequences, when a hand landed on his shoulder. Familiar, but far gentler than usual.

  “My turn, kids.” Emerald said.

  They walked forward, shoulders back, eyes narrowed. The disreputable station bum Heath had befriended was gone.

  Emerald spoke again. “I accept.”

  A blue light coalesced around Emerald in a nimbus of mana. Humans couldn’t feel aetherized argo flows, but his Class resonated with whatever was happening.

  Then it was over. Emerald looked the same, wearing mismatched armor from the Wraith and armed to the teeth. But something was different.

  In a way Heath was just now realizing came from Class instincts, Emerald had always been just a little bit wretched. A Disgraced Captain, punished by the System for betraying their Class so profoundly. That was gone. Now, if Heath had to describe Emerald in a single word, it would be dangerous.

  They felt like the mid-rank-two Classer they were, the extra thirty levels they had over the others never so obvious as right then.

  “Adorable,” the shaman said. Then he flicked his wrist forward.

  Heath could barely follow the movement, and jerked his head to watch Emerald.

  Their crewmember was nowhere to be found. Whatever projectile the Shaman had crafted splashed onto the ground and sizzled. Emerald phased back into view off to the side, aiming a thrown blade at the shaman. Halfway through the blade split into three copies of itself, each arcing on a separate trajectory.

  Heath was shoved from behind, losing track of the battle but forcing him to focus.

  “We’ll help the old timer,” Copperfield stated. Ekaterina stood behind him and nodded. Heath didn’t miss how much she was leaning on her staff. Or the exhaustion in Copperfield’s voice. “You help the Loon.”

  He was right. Heath wasn’t going to help here. He and Jenny Mae kept to the edges of the battle. They saw the Shaman thrust his staff at Emerald. One of the crystals winked out, returning to a dull quartz. In front of the psycho, something coalesced.

  Appearances and recent actions to the contrary, Heath had been well-educated, first in the city where he’d grown up with his mother, and later on by a persistent uncle. He still had no words for what appeared.

  A ghostly apparition, it’s form a mix of an in-atmo Imperial fighter jet, and a human being, formed in front of the shaman. It flew at Emerald, not needing to do anything so mortal as walking.

  Then he was back on the Loon.

  The devastation was worse inside, as impossible as that should be. The same sickly, viridescent veins he’d seen on the defenders had infected the Loon. They had reached through the walls, invading tendrils seeking out the ship’s core.

  His speed didn’t slow until he reached the bridge. Within, scars from a fierce battle were easy to see. Copperfield’s usual station was completely fried, a blackened stump with a shattered view screen in front of the leather-backed chair. Most of the view screens were either broken or valiantly fighting, images or text fluttering on and off. And all around, the tendrils. Most of the stations had been infected, but the Captain’s chair was still pristine.

  Heath sat down and sank into [Ship Link] farther than he had ever gone before. Until his class instincts were screaming at him to stop and blood began to trickle from his nose. He ignored it and pushed even farther. The Loon was fighting, and Heath would be there to help, no matter what it cost.