Phantasm

Sudden treachery from a paid ally was such a staple of the cyberpunk genre that I was honestly surprised it hadn’t happened already. With a thought, I flung up a phantasm of a mirrored wall. That would only buy us a second before they shot through it, but—

“Hey, where’d they go? And who are you guys?”

Maybe it would buy a little longer than that. Not that it mattered, because Borys was already moving. His storm took a little longer to get going, but when he had to cover such a small area, that extra time was measured in seconds.

An icy whirlwind was forming around him as he shot forward. I could barely make out his figure as he crashed through my barrier, and then he was among the mooks, and the whole corridor filled up with flying ice and snow.

People tend to think of guns as the ultimate weapon, but all weapons are situational. If you and your mates are in a corridor with your enemy at one end, then guns are pretty good. You can line yourselves up and all fire down the corridor without getting in each other’s way.

If your target is in the middle of your group, and the corridor is suddenly filled with biting ice and obscuring snow, the situation has changed. Suddenly, your guns are no good at all. You can’t even fire without hitting one of your friends and your hands have been chopped off already.

The rest of my team did not follow Borys into the blood slushie that was rapidly forming. They’d just get in his way. Kyle shielded us all while we sheltered in the elevator. Kyles's shield had been coated with some carbo-cobalt weave that made it even more damage-resistant. We should be able to take that out with us, so that was all right.

I made a phone call. Glitch had hung up on me, so I called one of my contingencies.

“Shade? It’s happened. Can you take care of it?”

“Yeah, hold on,” came from the other end of the line. There was a crash, some shouting, and then the hiss-thwack of the magic guns shooting someone.

“It’s done,” Shade told me.

“Put Byte on the line,” I said. Bye-bye, Glitch. You were useful.

“I can’t work like this, boss!” a higher-pitched voice said. “Shade got blood all over the chair! Where am I going to sit?”

“Just stand,” I suggested. “Is the rig all right?”

“Yeah, it’s fine. Kind of nice, actually. You mind if I—”

“Once we’re done, you can take what you like,” I said. “Consider it a bonus.” On top of her generous payment. I would have been more stingy, but the creds wouldn’t do us any good where we were going.

I glanced over at Borys. He was just about finished up.

“Is Glitch still logged in?” I asked.

“Yeah, yeah. Y’know, I’m losing respect for this guy. He was using official ShinseiDrachen credentials! I guess that makes sense, considering. Still, shoulda hacked it.”

“If he’d stayed honest, you wouldn’t be rifling through his stuff right now,” I pointed out. “So we’re good to go up a level?”

“Just say the word.”

Your party has killed 10 BlackOp Mooks - your experience share is 5200 XP

Borys had dismissed his storm and was collecting unused guns from the security team. They were covered in ice, now melting, but magic guns weren’t bothered by water. Arms full of fresh weapons, he jogged back to the elevator.

“Take us up,” I told Byte.

“You got it, boss.” The elevator doors closed and opened again after a short ride. They dinged open to reveal the familiar sight of the executive waiting area.

“Excuse me! You can’t go in there!” the receptionist said as we walked past her. She was franticly pushing a button, but I was pretty sure that it just summoned the team from downstairs.

Borys pushed open the dark hardwood doors to the main office. To our surprise, the CEO was all alone in his office, sitting behind his desk like everything was normal.

If he’d been facing away from us, I would have expected the chair to slowly turn around, revealing that he’d been shot in the face. As it was, he was still clearly alive, looking nervously at us, hoping he wouldn’t get shot.

“We’ll take the formula and your token,” I said. “Actually, we’ll take everything that’s in your safe.”

“That’s fine! Just don’t kill me, please? I have a family!”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, heading straight for the safe. These places were all built to the same plan, and I could sense the dark voids. Wait a minute, that wasn’t a safe…

I turned and carefully aimed at an otherwise inoffensive part of the wall, emptying my gun into the masonry. There was a brief silence as everyone looked at me. Then the body fell out, smashing through the remains of the false panel.

I looked at the CEO.

“I wasn’t! He wasn’t… it was…” he stammered.

“Get over here and open the safe,” I said.

“How did you know it was there?” he whined. I didn’t bother answering him. Nor did I bother trying to intimidate him. At this point, he could only act as the script demanded. That didn’t mean that there wouldn’t be any twists, but [Intimidate] would just bully the monster under the script.

This time, the script played it safe.

[Identification]: - CarboCobolt Deposition Formulae— Properties: None

[Identification]: - ShinseiDrachen Corporate Token— Properties: None

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

The rest of the run was pretty anti-climactic. Byte still had control of the security centre, so we could send all the goons—sorry, mooks— to an out-of-the-way corner and make our way out of the building without further issues.

The final transfer was done in a low-level meeting room in the offices of the Kobayashi-Krüger Konzern. You kill one executive in their fancy office, and all of the other CEOs suddenly find that dealing with you personally is much less of a concern. Not that I cared. I cast a bit of side-eye at the prominent KKK logo painted on the wall, but if Borys wasn’t going to say anything, I wasn’t either.

As soon as we took possession of the token, my phone beeped and started displaying directions to the exit. I showed it to the others and we started walking.

“Congratulations!” Axel’s voice came out of my phone again. “You’ve successfully completed the main run! What did you think of my level? Wasn’t it fun? Wasn’t it so much more inventive than what those other dungeons can come up with?”

I thought about it as we walked to the exit. Possibly by design, it wasn’t far.

“I’d be more inclined to think it was inventive if you hadn’t clearly cribbed it from a computer game,” I said. “It makes a change from slaughtering monsters as they come, but I question the need for any kind of killing at all.”

“Well, of course, there needs to be slaughter,” Axel said patronisingly. “Where else will mortals get experience from? Killing each other?”

According to my phone, the ordinary-looking residential building was where the exit was hidden. I gestured for Borys to go first.

“I question the need for levels at all,” I said. “They’re nice and all, but most people don’t need them.”

“As long as levels are possible, then someone will kill enough entities to get them,” Axel said. “Making monsters widely available means that everybody has the opportunity to grow.”

We all filed into the lobby. It looked ordinary enough, except for the black glossy slab where the mailboxes would normally go. There was an unlabeled slot in the centre of it.

“Just feed your tokens in there,” Axel said, “and you can enter the vestibule.”

I looked suspiciously at the phone. “The vestibule?”

“Just a place to wait while we finish up our business,” Axel said. “I owe you some questions, don’t I?”

“Fine.” I fed the tokens into the slot, and the black slab cracked open, revealing itself to be a door. Beyond was a brightly-lit white room, with white couches. A big screen lit up, showing about half of Axel. He was dressed all in white to match the room.

“Welcome, to the vestibule!” he said. I sighed and put my phone away. We all took seats.

Borys glanced at me, ceding the first question. We hadn’t discussed what questions we were going to ask, not wanting to give Axel notice, but we had discussed who was going to ask them.

“All right Axel, first question,” I said. “What floor are we on.”

Axel made a face. “Boring!” he exclaimed. “So many questions about life, the universe and your purpose, and you just ask about your immediate tactical concerns.”

“That’s as maybe,” I said. “But you said it yourself, those concerns are immediate.”

“Fine, fine,” Axel grumbled. “You’re on floor four. I didn’t think the first floor would be challenging for you, and you might have had complaints about the otome dating floor or the gatcha floor.”

I held back a “What?” with difficulty. Axel damn well would have taken that as my next question. Not trusting myself to speak, I nodded to Borys.

“How do we use the portal to get back to Earth?” he asked.

“That’s a much better question,” Axel said, smiling. “You’re my favourite Champion.”

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and held up three fingers. Opening his eyes, he started talking.

“You need three things. You need a way to open the portal. I can do that, if you ask me nicely enough. You need a way to control the destination. That… can be learned. Anybody with a high enough Theurgy should be able to do it with some practice. And lastly…”

He paused and gave us a sly grin.

“You need to get the Earth back in working order.”

Borys glared at Axel in silence, clearly holding himself back. Axel looked at me, then back at Borys.

“I believe that is a full and complete answer, but if you feel differently, I’ll hear you out.”

“The first two steps,” Borys said carefully. “You gave us some idea of how to accomplish them. You didn’t for the third.”

“That’s true,” Axel said nodding. “I’m afraid I have no idea of how you might accomplish the third task. I may be decamillenia in age, but I am only a dungeon.”

“You have said that getting back was impossible, then,” Borys stated.

“No,” Axel said. “I have reason to believe that it is possible. You see, someone is attempting to do it.”

Another tense silence. Axel looked at each of us, grinning slyly.

“Not curious?” he asked. “You don’t want to ask Who, or Why? I am dying to tell you.”

“Maybe later,” I replied. Borys looked like he was going to burst, but he nodded to me, passing the question along. “How many floors before we reach the end?”

“Tsk, another boring question,” Axel complained. “How many questions do you plan on wasting like this?”

“This will, among other things, tell me how many questions we’ve got remaining.” I pointed out.

“True,” Axel said. “In that spirit then, I shall say that it will be up to you!”

He gestured wildly. Seven doors appeared around the room. On one side, the doors were marked zero to three. On the other, they were marked five to seven.

“I’ll allow you to go down three floors at a time,” Axel declaimed. “Or you can go back to the floors you’ve already passed. The labels are accurate, by the way, I wouldn’t trick you that way.”

He leaned in close to the screen. “I really recommend the gatcha game floor.”

“Since we’re out of questions, I assume we can ask them again without losing a future question,” I said.

“Yes, yes, by all means, let us return to normal conversation,” Axel said.

“Then how on Earth did you manage to turn scantily clad women into a dungeon floor?” I asked. Axel cackled with laughter.

“Try it and see!” he said.

“Hang on, what was this about?" Cloridan asked.

“Don’t bother yourself,” I told him. “This is just going to be like the mook strippers. Monsters in revealing clothing.”

“Now, now,” Axel put in. “There are plenty of monsters that are more… comely. I chose mooks because they suited the aesthetic. The gatcha aesthetic is quite different. You won’t be disappointed.”

Cloridan gave me a pleading look.

“No, no, a thousand times no,” I said. “We’re here for a reason and we don’t want to get diverted. They’re monsters, Cloridan.”

I looked at the others. “We’re going down as far as we can, right?”

The others all nodded. Even Cloridan, though he put on a sulky face.

“Never mind,” Axel said. “Perhaps the elves will let you come back when it’s all over. Gate Seven, is it?”

“Yes,” I said, and stepped through.