When the burning hellscape faded away they were left in pure darkness. All three found themselves gasping, the searing hot air was suddenly thin on oxygen. "I told you to run." The deep robotic voice was angry and the three of them looked up. Blinking away the remnants of the searing light from their vision. The only light in the cavern came from the ember-like glow of the Demon's gauntlets.
None of them said anything, the three just stumbled to their feet and made for the exit. Jake watched them go relieved they were alive. "Ai you said they were clear."
"No, I said it was safe to go all out. I contacted their pyromancer and had them use a Flame Wall to buffer the splash damage from your attack. As long as they did as instructed there was no danger of death to them. Also, you had already informed them to flee. They choose to stay." The AI's synthetic voice was calm. Jake frowned. In the week he had been working with the AI he had come to rely on and trust them. They weren't in danger of being killed by him and had seemed reliable. This was the first time he had run into a situation like this.
"Next time make sure I know what you mean. If they had died because of me…" He stopped that train of thought.
"Very well. But you wouldn't have attacked with the necessary force to kill it in a single blow if I had informed you. The chances of the Hive Queen injuring you enough to trigger your passive were quite high. If not the sustained damage of using your Ember Fist would have. Either case would have resulted in their death for sure." Jake ignored her but couldn't help but glance at his health. His Ember Fist ability wasn't a tech skill, in fact as far as he knew it was a truly unique one. Born from when his gauntlets had eaten, quite literally, a very high tier magic staff. A fire one obviously. It was a strange phenomenon unique to him. Most likely due to the experimental upgrade attempts by the Artist when working on his gear.
It was a powerful elemental attack that greatly improved his offensive capabilities considering his pure melee nature. Unfortunately, it was a double edged ability, when his gauntlets filled with elemental fire it was akin to dunking his arms in a sea of smoldering embers. It burnt him constantly to use it.
Thinking about it he glanced at the strange spiderweb design on the back of his hands. They had appeared when his gauntlets had eaten a second high end magic staff. A wind elemental one. But for some reason, he couldn't figure out what it did. Other than generating a steady gentle breeze around his fist, nothing happened. It didn't increase his power, No wind blades or tornados were created. Nothing.
"Let's loot up. But we are going to have a long talk about this later. But right now I have to get back and log off. If I miss my own birthday my Dad will kill me." Jake pulled two small balls off the utility belt around his waist and tossed them up. They unfolded into small multi-limbed drones that buzzed around him. One of them spoke out loud in the same calm synthetic female voice. "Very well. But I assure you my calculations were perfect." They zipped away to scan and harvest the corpses. They were a major boon to his farming time. His mechanic Leah had built them. They weren't of much use until his AI integrated with them.
Leah was a class almost as rare as his own. A specialized crafter who worked with vehicles. Drones weren't normally part of her crafting repertoire. They were something of a passion project. Her lover had been a party member of his, a girl named Gadget. She was a Drone-o-mancer, at least that was what she claimed her class was. Jake had killed her with the rest of his party when his passive ability had triggered turning him into an uncontrolled killing machine. It worked as a second life once every twelve hours. Triggered when he took lethal damage it would fully heal him, give him an explosive increase in attributes, and leave him in a mindless state in which he attacked anything his body considered a threat.
His party had been there when another player named Killgore, a flak cannon class had killed him in a Perma Death Zone out of avarice. It triggered his passive and in that mindless state, he had targeted his friends and enemies alike as a threat.
Leah had forgiven him. Even choosing to work with him after finding out the truth of the world. Now she maintained the vehicle his group had previously commissioned and even functioned as his driver. In her free time, she tinkered with drones now. She had a lot of free time now that she permanently moved to Earth. Abandoning her pocket dimension life.
A message flashed over his vision letting him know he had left the Perma Death Zone as he emerged from the ant hole. Leah was there in the long narrow boat hovering over the dry sun baked red clay of the wasteland. The three other players were there too, all eyeing him with a mix of awe and fear. Their plasma gunner's face was pink, looking like she had a bad sunburn.
"What did you do down there Merc?" Leah asked him. She had a crooked smile plastered on her face, he recognized it as her nervous smile. Strangers made her nervous.
"Cleaned up their mess is all." His deep robotic voice still carried the hint of anger.
"We had things under…" The plasma gunner started then flinched, raising their hands defensively. A pack of cores bounced off them.
"Your cut of the cores. I'm keeping the mutagens." He walked past the flustered trio and stepped up into the boat, it bobbed slightly as he stepped in.
"That isn't fair we…" Their Aeromage started.
"Would be dead if I hadn't helped." He sat down and crossed his arms. His gauntlets were nowhere to be seen and his arms bore the still healing swirling wood grain burns.
"Drop it." Blaze their pyromancer put her hands on both of them, stopping them. The two glared at her then wilted.
"Um, do you… um maybe... need a ride?" Leah asked and almost flinched when they glanced at her. The three shared one last look and then scrambled into the floating boat. It was a long way back to the nearest hub.
Jake leaned back as the boat started forward. A barrier hummed into existence shielding them from the wind as it picked up speed. His earnings were still being docked to cover for the other towns that had lost their gamers due to his actions. But what he had been making had mostly gone into upgrading the boat. It was fast now. A silent blur cutting across the wasteland in the night. Restless sleep found him as they traveled.
**********
Jake rolled out of the bed and to his feet before he even fully awoke. "I'm awake." He groaned out while blinking away his sleep.
"It is almost noon. Your… friend will be here soon. We are going out for lunch with them for your birthday." His dad's voice came through his bedroom door.
"Thank Dad." Jake answered and he heard his father walking away.
Stripping as he went he moved to his bathroom to shower. While the water heated up he glanced at himself in the mirror. He had been playing the "game" for less than a year. Today was his fifteenth birthday so he wasn't sure if the changes were due to puberty or the game.
His eyes took in the lean frame with muscles drawn taut beneath his scarred skin. Most wounds healed when you traveled between dimensions. But he had suffered some that wouldn't fully heal. Even with his flesh virtually bulletproof while his passive had been active. There were a number of scars from multiple flak cannon blasts to his chest. Twisting he looked at the large nasty scar covering the lower left side of his back. It had been the killing blow struck against him that triggered his passive.
His grey eyes seemed a little hollow when he looked at himself in the mirror. His curly brown hair was getting a bit shaggy again as well. Reaching up he touched it and felt a sudden pang of sadness. He had let Cass trim it right before she died. She had said she would do it as a joke. Remembering her shocked expression when he actually agreed to let her made him smile, if only briefly. His gaze turned to his arms and sighed. The burn scars building up from the use of his Ember Fist were getting worse. At least fall was upon them. Otherwise, all the long sleeves would be annoying. He was not looking forward to summer.
Stepping out of his room showered and dressed he was surprised to find Gerri sitting with his father. She smiled at him and wished him a happy birthday while standing there self consciously in what was obviously a new outfit. Gerri had been Cassandra's best friend and secretly her half sister. The child of their shared father's affair. Jake and Gerri hadn't ever gotten along well. Of course, he hadn't gotten along with Cass until she started playing the game either. But even after that he mostly just put up with her hanging around Cass. It was only after Cassandra's death that through their shared grief a friendship of sorts had been born.
But things had gotten awkward in the last week. During that time Jake had gone on the quest to escort Jon the crafter known as the Artist to a malfunctioning dimensional anchor. He had believed the powers that be would tell everyone he was sick. His father was out of town so there shouldn't have been anyone to bother him. Only that isn't what happened. The system had somehow sent a fake Jake to school every day.
No, the fake hadn't made a pass or been confessed to by Gerri in that time. Instead, it ignored her completely. Going so far as to slam the door in her face when she followed him home. After Cassandra's death, she would normally follow him to his home and spend a while talking about her lost sister. It had been strange for Jake at first but in the end, it helped both of them to heal. When he returned he found Gerri no longer following him. Unsure what was going on he tracked her down for the first time. In her painfully insecure ways, his fake's actions had made her believe he disliked her...again. Only after making up some stupid excuse and promising he liked her did things go back to normal. Well, not normal. Perhaps he had gone too far in reassuring her.
"Are those new clothes?" Jake asked. His father sitting at the table behind Gerri raised his eyebrow and the girl lit up.
"Yes. Thank you for noticing." Jake wanted to bite his tongue. He hadn't meant it as a compliment but was just curious. He had asked the mayor who oversaw not only the town but the "game" to help Gerri out. Her less than maternal single mother worked a minimum wage job. She didn't mistreat Gerri, more than anything she seemed to simply ignore her. But thanks to his request Gerri's mother had a new better paying job and he was glad to see things had improved for Gerri as well. At least somewhat. Otherwise, he might have had to change his request.
After that awkward moment, they left for the restaurant. Jake hadn't planned on celebrating his birthday at all this year. But his father had returned home in time to find Gerri still at their home. Before she could flee, though Jake's father always insisted she could stay. His father had invited her to celebrate with them. Thus Jake had been forced to celebrate his birthday. Worse his father took off from work, which would cut into Jake's time farming for cores.
The trio was walking down the street toward the restaurant. The strained silence was only broken when Jake's dad would ask one or both of them a question. He mostly got single word answers back from both of them. His dad was just about to ask the two teens bluntly if they were dating when a shriek of terror tore through the air. Several people came rushing around the corner, their faces alive with panic. Behind them came a towering nine foot tall figure. It stopped as it turned the corner and blinked… all five eyes. Its tongue lolled out as if tasting the air.
It then pointed a large clawed grey skinned hand right at Jake. "UNIQUE!" Its growling voice garbled out.