Morphiest sulkily followed Shifty to the Transfer Room and waited as he spoke the code that would shift their position to His Extreme Glory’s personal vault. She dreaded what was to come. If He merely chose to smite her, that would be the best-case scenario from the hundreds that had run through her head since she’d received her orders. However, since Shifty was present, she knew she could only wish for such a swift and merciful end.

She felt the world around her stretch and twist and tear, and with a light pop of displaced air found herself in the massive cavern where the Crimson Overlord dwelled.

“We will wait here, He appears to be busy,” Shifty whispered, not bothering to conceal the awe and terror he felt.

“Yes,” she whispered in reply.

More than an hour passed before the massive, scaled form turned to regard them, tearing his gaze away from something that lay beyond the small mountain of gold upon which he’d coiled himself.

“Ah, you’re here. Perfect,” Kragathor rumbled, winding his way toward a closer pile of gold. The sound of cascading gold coins continued for almost a minute even after he settled himself into place. "I have a task for you, one which your group will be best suited for handling, although I do not yet have a set time frame for when you will carry out the task. For now, I simply want you to make preparations. Although, Morphiest, you will have to work on it in the time we are not logged in. I still expect you to continue your assumed duties in the game. We’re going to push for Level 10 tomorrow.”

The crawling fear inside the Doppelganger’s chest evaporated as the massive, rumbling voice spoke, replaced with awe and gratitude that threatened to burst through her ribs. Had she had tear ducts in her base form, she’d be having difficulty in not crying in relief. He’d even addressed her by name!

As Bob and the two minions reappeared and regrouped after logging in, they headed for the closest request board. He left FarShot and ShadowRunner messages, explaining the plan for the day if they wished to join in.

The three of them loaded up on every Yellow Zone request that they could. They had open ended bounties on drones and mutants. Requests to survey damaged tunnel areas and to locate and destroy mutant nests. There were even a few for retrieving biological samples from various types of mutants, which Buzz assured the others he’d be able to handle. Over all, they had a bit more than a dozen separate requests to fill.

Just as they were about to enter the tunnel locks, Bob received a message from FarShot indicating they’d logged in, so he sent them a list of requests to pick up from the board. A short while later, the sibling duo joined them, and they entered the tunnels.

“Father dearest is out of town today, so we can play all day,” said FarShot after they exchanged greetings. “I’m guessing you guys are planning to do the same, with all these requests we piled up?”

“Yep!” Buzz answered cheerily. “We’re aiming for level 10 today! Did you two stock up on ammo? Wouldn’t want to have to keep coming back due to running out.”

“Yeah, we did,” ShadowRunner said as they filed into and through the tunnel’s lock mechanism. “I also picked up a few more of those grenade things. Two more of the thermite ones, and two ‘Fragmentation Grenades’ that are supposed to be good against softer targets. Did you know there was a class that specializes in these things?”

“I think that class used a different variant of the same idea, since it is supposed to be about long-range area bombardment. The one you had is supposed to be thrown by hand. I checked all the available classes before I made my choice and have been doing a bit more research in the WIK since then.” said Bob.

“Where do you find the time? Abyss, I’d love it if I could stay logged in all day.”

“Well, Shadow, I’m taking a nice little break right now from my regular daily routine since I only ever work when I feel like it. That means I’ve got plenty of free time to use for myself. Besides, this is much more interesting than my daily life was before this.”

FarShot shook her head. “I wish we had that kind of freedom. It must be nice.”

Bob shrugged as he answered. “It’s how I have always lived.”

“There’s nothing wrong with a life of service, though,” said Buzz. “My trade revolves around providing services and goods to others, but it has been quite fulfilling, and my clientele are deserving of the best service I can give them. Even if my own desires aren’t always met, I know that I serve a greater cause.” His voice took on a wistful tone as he spoke, and his eyes darted at and away from FarShot’s back a few times as they walked. “However, it’s long been in my family to serve others. Each of us has our own path to follow.”

“Chunk like feel pretty. Chunk like smash. Chunk not worry about anything else.”

FarShot started giggling, and then her brother joined in. Their chuckling rapidly devolved into a full-on laughing fit that seemed to feed off of each other as their bodies were wracked with spasms of merriment. It was a few minutes before they’d calmed down, their faces red as they blinked away tears of mirth and recovered their breath.

“Thanks Chunk, I think we needed that,” said FarShot as she giggled a bit more. Her brother nodded in agreement.

Buzz and Bob looked at each other and exchanged shrugs. Humans could be weird sometimes.

The group’s conversations died down as they proceeded deeper into the tunnels and began encountering their targets. Bob was at his least useful here, as they hardly stopped in one place for more than a few seconds, destroying everything they came across with a fusillade of gunfire.

Buzz, due to his weapon choice, was actually doing fairly well. He’d bought a type of ammo that spread a larger number of small projectiles than the buckshot mode on Bob’s turrets, and it appeared to be specialized in taking down groups of the smaller drones.

FarShot had been dumping all her skill points into Rifles, and had gotten a few increases through use as well. She was now firing faster and with more accuracy and a growing confidence as she continued to put down target after target with nary a miss in between.

Chunk was providing the group with most of the cover. An unusual perk of her having made her avatar as physically large as she could was that her broad body simply blocked more shots. Since her equipment was sized to her frame, this meant her tower shield was equally over-sized.

Even ShadowRunner was holding his own as he continued funneling his skill points into Pistols. His scouting abilities hadn’t been improving much, but he was now able to reliably hit moving targets the size of a mutant rat, at least when he didn’t insist on dual wielding and firing wildly like some kind of idiot. Although, Bob had to admit that there was a certain aesthetic to the manic alternating discharge of two firearms at a group of seemingly overwhelming foes.

Bob’s only real contributions were occasional potshots with his rifle as they breezed through the subterranean corridors.

However, that changed as soon as they came up on their first mutant rat nest.

As they neared the marker for the nest extermination request, a smaller mutant rat ran away from them as they approached. Some thirty to forty seconds later, an ominous chittering and skittering could be heard echoing through the corridors, much louder than the usual swarm of rats they dealt with elsewhere.

Bob tossed out two portable shields, one on either side of Chunk, and dropped his two turrets in buckshot mode to either side of the shields. Bob and ShadowRunner took cover behind the shield on Chunk’s left, since Buzz had moved quickly to stand with FarShot on the right.

Time seemed to slow as the squeaking and scratching noises grew closer. The atmosphere of the group had a tension to it that Bob had never really experienced firsthand in his own life. Even without the threat of real death, they were each determined to hold their ground here for their own reasons. He was lost in his internal revelry of this truly novel sensation and started firing several moments after everyone else as the river of rat flesh broiled out of multiple adjoining corridors and rushed toward them.

The wave of six-legged rodents was met with a wall of flying metal and thunderous cacophony. Chunk was the only one not contributing to the deafening storm of gunfire as they fired as fast as they could at the onrushing flood of bodies which continually spilled over the growing embankment of bullet ridden corpses.

Bob’s pulse raced as he frantically emptied magazine after magazine into the steadily encroaching tide. Notifications flickered in his vision and disappeared, unheeded. His focus was solely on ensuring that as few mutant rats reached their formation as possible. This was quite possibly the most excitement he had ever experienced.

Chunk finally started contributing as the front runners began to break through the hail of projectiles and charge at them, lashing out with her electro-club at the creatures as they crashed against the shields, adding the stink of electrical discharge and burnt flesh to the growing odors of smoke and blood. Thankfully for the group, the six-legged rats’ anatomy was not suited for leaping the barriers, and so they instead tried to scramble over the slick surfaces or force their way into the gap Chunk left for herself, only to be met with crushing blows and arcs of electricity. Any that tried to squeeze by the gaps between the shields and the walls where the turrets lay were blasted apart in a rather spectacular fashion.

It was difficult to gauge how much time had passed, and Bob had taken to keeping track of the percentage of his original ammo reserves remaining. The flow of rats finally slackened when he was at 22% remaining, and he stopped firing completely at 20% as the turrets were capable of handling the quickly diminishing source of mutants.

“That. Was. Intense!” ShadowRunner cheered.

“No kidding. I was starting to worry I’d run out of ammo, and I really stocked up ahead of time,” his sister agreed.

“I’ve never experienced anything quite like that,” Bob added in an even tone, belying the fact that he was very content with this freshly made memory, perhaps even a little happy.

“Wow. I know you guys aren’t much for bio loot, but with the requests we picked up, after a bit of synthesis, we’re going to get quite a windfall here. I guess I should put my level up skill points into the relevant skill… Sweet abyss! I already hit level 7! Most of the way to 8!”

The group broke into distracted idle chatter as they allocated their skill points and chose the ability that they’d unlocked upon reaching level 6. Buzz looted the battlefield, helping to ease the rather horrid stench lingering in the air which the rest were still too hyped from the battle to have fully noticed yet.

Bob had reached level 8 and was nearly thirty percent of the way into the next level. He chose the Additional Channel option that he’d been eyeing from the start. He’d probably go for Durable Constructs next, the other ability at the bottom of the tree. He put the three skill points earned into Power Management, as he knew that was going to become even more of a choke point for his ability to deploy.