As soon as it entered her veins, the girl’s eyes widened unnaturally.

  “Wow,” she said, shaking her head and staring at the others. “I’ve never felt so alive in my entire life.”

  “You’ll get another injection soon,” Valerius promised as he injected the two younger boys, who reacted the same way.

  When Valerius turned toward the four-year-old, Karl couldn’t take it. His anger surged at the sight of whatever plan was being forced on the children. Verres’s factory had been bad enough, but this was something else entirely.

  Against his better judgment, Karl drew a magnetic arrow and fired. He activated Arrow-Will Guidance, shifting his view into the arrow’s perspective. He guided the arrow with precision, nudging it just enough to clip past the syringe. The metal tore free from Valerius’s hand and shattered on the stone. Karl strained to arc the arrow upward, sending it over the massive vault at the back of the chamber.

  Stamina (+10): lvl 5 (40/60)

  Honor (+50): 3,150

  Glory (+30): 3,160

  Level: 45 (220/460)

  “Damn!” Valerius muttered, staring at the shattered syringe. He snapped his fingers at a refinery worker. “Clean that up. Now!” He turned back to the courtesans. “Take those three into the vault and see that they get to work.”

  “Understood,” the lead courtesan replied, irritation flickering across her face.

  Sporus gripped Karl’s shoulder as the three older children were led away. Valerius dragged the four-year-old toward his crafting station on the platform. Sporus shook his head, a silent warning not to do anything more reckless.

  Through the Pack Link, Kara signaled her approval of Karl’s action.

  “We need to find out what all this is for,” Sporus whispered, barely moving his lips.

  Karl agreed, though his anger still burned. He forced himself to breathe as Björn and Mýra nodded encouragement. He turned to ask the Trickster to scout ahead—and froze.

  The Trickster was gone.

  Did you see him? Karl asked Kara through their mind.

  No, she replied. I was watching the kids.

  Karl checked his internal parchment map. The squirrel was already across the room, dangling from a metal rafter, eyes blazing as he glared at Valerius.

  “It’s sometimes lethal for the youngest,” Valerius said calmly, kneeling beside the child. “I’ve adjusted the dosage, so it shouldn’t be as bad.”

  He never finished.

  The Trickster shrieked and dropped from the rafter like a living weapon. His claws, tipped with venom from Titus’s ingots, tore into Valerius’s face in a whirlwind of strikes, spraying blood and green poison across the alchemist. Valerius’s body immediately reacted to the poison by producing a purple mist around him to detoxify, but the Trickster had already permanently blinded him.

  The little boy screamed, drawing every eye in the chamber.

  The stealth mission was over. It had become a full assault.

  Karl and Sporus immediately began firing off their magnetic arrows at the guards near the giant vault door while Kara and Björn dealt with the two guards standing near the stairwell; Kara decapitated her guard with one fell swoop while Björn landed a crunching blow to his guard’s spine with the knuckle spikes Titus had made for him.

  As expected, the guards Karl and Sporus hit were yanked backwards by the magnetic effects, keeping them from opening the rune-locked vault door for the courtesans, who hissed in anger at the destruction of their allies and darted behind one of the bubbling refinery vats. The twelve workers in lab coats sprinted away to hide.

  Karl and Sporus each sent two more arrows, this time Venomcore, to poison the fallen guards. But just like Valerius, who tossed the Trickster off and dumped an orange vial into his mouth that restored his strength, the poisoned guards’ skins released a purple vapor to detoxify against the Venomcore Fanghead Arrows.

  They were going to need brute force.

  Valerius smashed another vial on the ground, cloaking himself in invisibility before Ratatoskr could shoot his explosive acorns or plasma balls. The projectiles from the Trickster missed, detonating on one of the glass vats of coffee, causing a tidal wave of boiling caffeine to slosh down to the clean floors near Karl and the other.

  Mýra leaped over the coffee and made a beeline for the four children who raced to the side of the refinery at unnatural speeds from the injections. Once she reached them, she guided them swiftly back to Karl and the others. Though she did fire off a few arrows with Karl’s bow to help drain the remaining guards’ Health.

  Karl and Sporus continued peppering their targets with arrows to the head, with Karl’s arrows inking them in the face, but the purple smoking men moved with divine speed and closed the distance in a few seconds.

  Thankfully Kara and Björn took them on at close quarters with their magical weapons, with Kara blasting a light beam to her man’s leg and skewering him with her sword as he tripped, and Björn swiping the other man’s gladius out of the way with his battle ax before slamming his chest into him; due to Björn’s enhanced armor, the man flew back, splashing into the boiling coffee which burned his skin, leaving him vulnerable to Björn’s strike to his groin.

  Sporus flinched at the fatal wound beside Karl.

  But that meant there were two more guards left to face. Where were they?

  Karl’s heart raced as he held his Tentacle Bow loosely in his grip, advancing alongside Sporus, who also wielded a magnetic arrow, while Kara and Björn flanked them.

  The Trickster, frustrated at losing Valerius, grappled onto Karl’s shoulder after snatching a few of the thousands of needles that Valerius had at his elevated workshop.

  “You want me to inject you with one?” the Trickster asked, his tone unusually upset but resorting to his more playful demeanor to cope; seeing the children harmed had visibly upset him.

  “No,” Karl said, as he and Sporus snatched one of the needles to investigate.

  Item: Café Aeternum 2.0 (Legendary) — Grants complete suppression of sleep for up to 48 hours. Enhances reaction speed by +25% and Stamina regeneration by +20%. While active, pain perception and emotional response are dampened by 50%. After 48 hours without rest, the user begins experiencing temporal hallucinations and dream intrusions into waking consciousness. Each additional hour compounds cognitive decay, increasing aggression, fixation, and obedience to perceived authority. If the effect ends without structured sedation, the user suffers catastrophic neural collapse.

  “By the gods,” Sporus whispered, holding the needle with horror. “He actually made Cleopatra’s coffee even more powerful.”

  “I think that might be the least of our problems for right now,” Kara said, pointing with her burning sword to the freakish ghouls that emerged from behind the vats. The twelve refinery workers now twitched and had jaws that hung distortedly low as if someone had widened them on a stretch rack. Their breaths came in ragged gasps as they lumbered towards Karl and his friends.

  Those lovely courtesans seemed to be behind it. The three of them emerged from behind the hanging jaw men, whispering commands that could not be refused.

  Thankfully, Mýra and the four children made it safely behind them, but before they could escape up the stairwell, a steel wall fell over the doorway.

  The only explanation was the invisible Valerius. Karl, using his Lunar Sight, could see his faint silhouette pulling down a lever near the vault door before dumping some white liquid on it, causing it to short-circuit. The vault door then obeyed his runic command and opened up for him a meter to let him slip by. A heartbeat later, it shut.

  “Please don’t let them take us to the melt,” the little four-year-old boy said, hanging onto his big sister’s arms. The middle-aged boys huddled around Mýra, who placed her shield in front of them protectively.

  “We’ll take care of them,” Björn said with an encouraging smile as the freaky scientists began to run.

  34

  SATURINE PUPPET SHOW

  As terrifying as the jaw-hanging refinery workers sprinting toward them were, Karl felt a flicker of excitement at the chance to activate his newest blessing. He had worried that summoning a blizzard underground wouldn’t work, but snow erupted into the chamber all the same. The swirling gust shoved several workers back, though not for long.

  The blizzard blinded them, but they could still charge through it. Karl’s damage surged by 50% within the storm, yet he knew better than to waste it on mindless grunts being puppeted by the three courtesans. He sent his intent through the Pack Link, and Kara seized his arm just before he Elf Leaped them across the chamber toward the women.

  “Mýra, get that door open! Björn, kill as many as you can,” Karl shouted as he Elf Leaped himself, Kara, and the Trickster up toward the ceiling.

  They dropped in free fall as Karl loosed a Glacial Arrow, empowered by the blizzard, straight at the three courtesans clustered near Valerius’s platform. Their chanting cut off as their bodies froze in place for two seconds.

  Kara and the Trickster struck immediately.

  Kara activated her Valkyrie Rune Leap, her descent hitting harder as she drove the flaming Sólbrandr down onto the lead courtesan. The Trickster hurled himself into another, his staggerless armor releasing a shockwave that shattered her face into fragments.

  Karl landed with practiced ease and saw the third courtesan still standing. It didn’t matter. He drew a Resonant Pullhead Arrow, immune to charm and fear, and fired it straight in between her breasts.

  The courtesan yanked forward, and Karl met her with a headbutt from his antlered helmet, slamming her into the stone. She wasn’t dead, and that was exactly the plan.

  The Trickster shouted with rage and leaped to claw out her eyes and face like the other one. Naturally, the pretty courtesan shrieked at such a disfiguring fate. Karl snatched Ratatoskr right before he could end her career as a whore, and life more generally.

  “Tell me why the children were needed!” Karl growled, holding the Trickster a few centimeters from her face like a promise.

  The woman’s eyes bulged at the rabid metal squirrel, but she said nothing. Karl lowered his hand a centimeter. The Trickster pierced her nose with his Venomcore claws, drawing blood and causing her to scream.

  “I can keep going!” Karl warned, his rage and this woman’s dealing with children making him impervious to her yelping for mercy.

  “We’re never told why!” she screamed, shielding her face. “We just deliver them here, and they disappear in that vault tunnel.”

  Karl and Kara glanced at the giant rune vault; it was likely they were not going to be able to open that, now that the only person who could had slipped away. But one thing was absolutely clear: those kids were being sent to work beneath the Colosseum, never to return. Karl could only guess why they did not, given what happened due to a lack of sleep over a few days.

  As to what they were doing beneath the grand arena, Karl had no idea. But he had a sneaking suspicion that it was connected to all the Glory dust that came from the fallen and the magical abilities used on the sands.

  Children screamed behind them.

  Karl and Kara spun, the Trickster poised to leap, and saw Sporus being swallowed up to the legs by a mob of jawed creatures.

  Björn was already decapitating workers with his Bifrost-dripping axe, a rainbow shield flaring around Mýra and the children. More creatures piled onto Björn’s back, but he didn’t stagger, Titus’s upgrades keeping him upright; vents spewed from his joints to keep him stable. Björn answered with spiked fists, his hand punching clean through a creature’s wide mouth and snapping its neck, laughing as he tore through the rest.

  Before Karl could move, the Trickster turned around and fired a bright plasma ball into the woman’s face, horribly burning and blinding her. Kara finished her off with a swift stroke of her sword to her throat.

  Karl moved without hesitation now, Elf Leaping himself, Kara, and the Trickster toward the worker about to swallow Sporus’s face, guiding his arrow through the writhing necks ahead of them. The shot buried itself in the creature’s spine, dropping it.

  Kara and the Trickster arrived with him. Kara blasted a light beam into the chest of the monster gnawing on Sporus’s foot while Karl drew the Shard of Máni and drove it into another’s brain. He struck again and again within seconds, dealing triple damage until it collapsed.

  Strength (+20): lvl 14 (0/150)

  Wealth (+6): 11,310 Gold

  Glory (+90): 3,250

  Level: 45 (310/460)

  The increase in Strength made every fiber of his muscles expand slightly, especially in his forearms, biceps, and triceps, making the drawing of the bow that much easier.

  “Thanks,” Sporus said, wiping saliva from himself.

  “You’re welcome for not making jokes,” the Trickster replied, chuckling as he lobbed explosive acorns into nearby jaws, staggering them back.

  Sporus sighed and fired Resonant Pullhead Arrows, dragging the creatures into Kara’s burning blade. Karl helped finish off the remaining workers just as the blizzard faded, and his damage returned to normal.

  “Wow, that wasn’t so bad,” the Trickster said, licking blood from his claws. “I was hoping for more.”

  Karl groaned and looked at him. “Why would you say that?”

  “I don’t get it,” Mýra said, punching the metal door with her Cryocoil gauntlet and spraying ice across its surface.

  “Are there any threads?” Björn asked, dropping his Bifrost barrier and stepping closer, with the children scattering aside.

  “No. It’s not like the other door.”

  “Björn, want to try?” Karl asked.

  Björn shrugged and slammed his axe into the metal. It barely dented. He frowned, drew back, and struck again. Similar result. The wall must have been thick. Given enough time, though, maybe an hour, he could break through.

  If only they had that time.

  A horrible, screeching laughter pierced the air at the failed attempt. Everyone immediately looked at the Trickster, but the squirrel was staring at the children, not laughing. His eyes were cloaked with fondness as he blinked, then looked at the others in confusion.

  “You heard a creepy laugh and thought it was me?”

  The laughter came again, clearly not the Trickster. Everyone turned to see hundreds of small, fey-looking creatures emerging from the vats, wearing bright red caps, their eyes constantly shifting. They might have looked like cute little gnomes if not for their crooked noses, coffee-stained skin, and yellowed teeth pitted with black rot.

  “Murder them!” one shouted, whipping the rest into a frenzy. Each of the little creatures started chanting those two words, their voices high-pitched and strangely terrifying.

  They leapt from the vats, no longer restrained by the dead refinery workers who must have been boiling them for the coffee mixture.

  “No time for the battleaxe,” Karl said, nodding to Kara as they both shifted into their werewolf forms, intent on tearing the door down faster.

  As the horde charged, Karl activated his Beta’s Mark Rune on the door, followed by Hungering Freeze, encasing it completely in ice.

  Glory (-465): 2,785

  He wasn’t sure it would work on a nonliving object, but it did. Together, Karl and Kara slammed into the frozen door, Karl activating Moonfang Strike to deal 150% more damage.

  Sporus’s bow whistled as shadowy arrows flew. Björn raised another Bifrost barrier to funnel the creatures as they swarmed forward. Rage surged through Karl and Kara as the door cracked and splintered beneath their assault. Karl was grateful they had fed well earlier, or he would have been drained by the effort. The door groaned and warped as even the Trickster fired explosive acorns into its joints.

  “They’re getting closer,” Mýra warned, placing herself in front of the children with shield raised and dagger ready.

  Karl growled and threw his full weight into the door. It finally gave way like shattered glass, exploding into fragments and scraping his body in painful places.

  “This way!” Karl shouted, letting Mýra and the children run up the stairs first.

  Intelligence (+10): lvl 8 (70/90)

  Glory (+30): 2,815

  Level: 45 (340/460)

  Sporus followed, then Björn, then the Trickster, and finally Kara, who hesitated before going.

  Karl activated his Moonflayer Veil, vanishing from sight as the gremlin-like creatures surged forward. Like a savage beast, he let Fenrir take control for a moment. Karl smashed into the swarm, stomping and thrashing, killing dozens in a violent frenzy, snatching some into his mouth and swallowing without chewing. The coffee-soaked creatures restored his Stamina completely.

  I could do this all day, Karl thought, freezing time with Urðr’s Vision for five seconds. The cost drained all his Stamina, but there were plenty of small snacks to replenish it. He tore through dozens more of the creatures in frozen time, spending three hundred Glory to extend the rampage further.

  It felt too easy with such power, and he lusted for more.

  As blood splashed all over his fur, he felt thrilled that he was becoming unstoppable. He could become unbeatable, a wall for Kara and their children.

  Nothing would stop him.

  When time resumed, he shoved four into his mouth at once, chewing savagely and tasting bitter coffee. Though he thinned their numbers, hundreds more poured endlessly from the vats. One mistake and they would swarm him like ants. Yet everything in him wanted to recklessly keep going.

  Alpha Path (+2): 16 (70/260)

  Reiði Points (+2): 9

  Glory (-300, +60): 2,575

  Level: 45 (400/460)