Allen walked back into the hotel room with Nora trailing behind him. Everybody was present in the common room except for Shoam, Phantom, and Meredith. Many of them were eating, but otherwise it looked like they were just sitting around.

Allen sent a faint flicker of will through the room. It wasn’t part of any special skill, just Mental Manipulation working in a different way from invisible tentacles. Jack was the only one who reacted; the pulse was too soft for Clara to sense manually, even though she was over level one-thousand. The others just looked back at him a few moments later, some nodding. Allen couldn’t sense Jack’s mental web yet, and probably wouldn’t be able to until level five-hundred, but he knew it was there.

[“Finally,”] Jack sent, using a framework Allen couldn’t sense, even as he walked up to the group. [“I almost thought you had given up on your magic, then I would have been the mind mage.”]

Allen mentally scoffed at his friend. “What’s new here?” he asked the group. [“We both know your magic is useless against anything but monsters and wild animals.”]

[“That’s what you say, but I could turn you into a wild animal right now if I wanted to.”]

[“Not before I make you shit your pants.”] Allen countered. He just got amusement in response, as if the Ranger was daring him to try. It was debatable if he could actually pull off a strong enough compulsion though; it depended on how much he needed to take a shit. [“I’ll at least make you rip a huge sloppy fart before you do anything. I only have Mental Manipulation right now.”]

[“Sure…”] Jack replied.

Barely an instant passed before Allen was bombarded with an overwhelming urge to pull his pants down. A vein popped on his forehead as he clenched his jaw, his fists, and his asscheeks. The compulsion only lasted a second, but Allen had almost resorted to forcibly shutting down his ego to stop it. It was only with sheer will that he kept his pants on. He glared back at Jack, who only offered him a shit eating grin. The two silently agreed to a ceasefire and turned their attention back to the ongoing conversation, which Allen had already missed the first part of.

“Shoam just left with Phantom to take that girl back to her father in Silt Valley, her mother is likely still missing,” Clara began, leaning back on a chair. She ran her tongue across her pointed teeth and sighed. Without her armor on, the fellman woman was a little taller than Jack and maybe a bit more muscular too. Her yellow-orange eyes flicked over to Allen, narrowing to slits from beneath her dark red hair. “She’s probably being held wherever Meredith went,” she added.

[“That crazy woman’s probably caused another fucking incident already,”] Jack sent Allen. “We also got a response from the Hillford governor regarding our meeting. It’s tomorrow evening under the pretense of discussing certain new laws put into place by the ESF, which is bullshit just to be clear. We were able to use the mercenaries’ formal seal they got from the capital to arrange everything legitimately,” Jack said. [“It was a pain in the ass, I hate politicians. You and Christopher should go talk to the geezer.”]

Allen groaned through the telepathic link. [“Fine, but then you have to deal with Meredith.”] he received a mental sigh of acceptance in response.

“How do we intend to have this meeting?” Christopher asked, getting nods of concern from Amelia and Ty. Camila just looked hungover. “We aren’t actually messengers from Rotherham.”

Allen threw himself down on one of the fluffy sofas and summoned a slab of beef jerky into his hand. “Just act really formal and overly calm. The calmer you look the more dangerous you are, and the more arrogant you act the more important you are.”

Amelia rolled her eyes. “How does that get us the information we need from the Hillford government? We can’t just kill our way through them like we did with that convoy.”

“Relax about that, they all respawned,” Allen began, wagging his finger sarcastically, “and all the politicians would respawn too, well, the ones who aren’t holding illegal slaves that is.” He looked between Amelia and Christopher and grinned. “We’ll just wing it. The three of us can go and talk to the governor and see if he knows anything, then we murder our way into the sex dungeon I’m sure is underneath the city. Literally every city has an underground dungeon, by the way.”

Amelia just sighed and cupped her face in her hands.

[“Alright, this will work. We’ll take Phantom too,”] Allen said to Jack, he got a mental laugh in response.

“What about me and Camila?” Ty asked from his spot on the opposite couch.

“Uh… you two can go with Clara and Jack, take Nora and Shoam too,” Allen suggested. “We’ll stay in contact and feed you whatever information we can, um, get out of the governor.”

Grunts and hums of approval rolled through the group. Amelia and Christopher still looked a bit unconvinced of the plan, which wasn’t really a plan, but Allen knew they would figure it out. Clara and Jack both left to continue looking into the Lanthinus company’s more suspicious dealings. That left Allen alone with his group and Nora while everyone finished their food.

“Sparring, anyone?” he asked after his last piece of beef jerky. “I need to spend points.”

“Huh? Sparring?” Camila asked, sitting up. “I’m in.”

Allen smiled dimly at the Berserker and stood up. With nothing better to do, the others followed suit with a groan on Amelia’s part. Allen guided them back to his spot at the edge of the forest, poking around with his Mind Sense while he was at it. On the way out of the city, he counted almost a hundred people that he was sure he could make shit themselves on the spot if he wanted to.

It boiled down to whether they were holding it in, how weak their bowels were, and how preoccupied they were with something other than holding it in. Ultimately, it was easy to nudge someone towards doing something they already sort of wanted to do, and very hard to nudge someone towards doing something they really didn’t want to do. There was also the element of surprise. Surprise shits were incredibly powerful, and one of the major reasons Allen had stopped eating, especially around Jack.

Unfortunately, his body still needed food as it was.

“You and me first,” Camila said as they stepped into the same clearing Allen had just been in with Nora earlier that day. She sauntered into place across from him, equipped with nothing more than her casual clothes and a rusty junk sword.

Allen rolled his shoulders and focused his senses on Camila’s mind. It was sluggish in parts but also spastic in others, a telltale sign of drunkenness. “Do I feel bad about taking all the levels from killing that Noble?” Allen asked himself. “No, no I don’t”

Name: Camila

Human – Warrior – Level 192

The others got comfortable in one way or another. Ty even pulled one of the chairs from the hotel out of his inventory. He had the most endurance out of any of them, so that wasn’t too hard to believe.

“Waiting Dusk takes a bit over eight minutes to fully charge, which also increases the burst speed,” Allen thought, waiting for everyone to get situated. They were going to need Amelia after the bout, or rather, Camila would. It didn’t matter how much of a savant she supposedly was, almost forty levels and a threshold wasn’t something easily outdone, even if Allen hadn’t even invested the vast majority of his skill points by then. “I don’t know what the proportion is with the speed boost though. So far it’s only been… like fifteen seconds since I activated the skill.”

Allen stood motionless with two random daggers in reverse grips. The first thing he noticed about his new skill was that it still let him breathe, talk, wiggle his fingers, and move his eyes. The overall effect was similar to dead calm, but a bit slower and only for focus. That fact sort of led him to believe that the skill was more centered around the speed boost, which was exciting.

“Uh f-hey,” Camila slurred. “Are you just gonna stand there or…”

Allen narrowed his eyes. “You’ve just got something on your face,” he said through a condescending smile.

Camila snorted. “Aha, sorry sweety, but that’s not gonna w—”

She couldn’t get the rest of her words out before Allen lunged at her with Ruptured Maelstrom charged to the minimum of 100 MP. The speed was respectable, but only about a third of what Slip Step had been capable of at the same tier. That was only after about thirty seconds of waiting though, so the full eight minutes would be about six times faster than Slip Step.

Still, thirty Seconds gave Allen all the speed he needed to close the distance to Camila. He lashed out with his rusty blades. He got close to slicing Camila across the side, but he was forced to dive past her or impale himself on her sword. His momentum carried him though a roll, and he fired off two Chaotic Bolts before he even got his feet underneath him.

The bolts flew off from his fists, clenched around his daggers. The magic came out as a fist sized ball of white energy. It almost looked like fire, but black at the edges and even more erratic. The path it took was jagged and unpredictable, but not necessarily fast. Camila was able to dodge one and block another with her sword, but that gave Allen an opening to move in with more control.

Camila had a firm look on face when their blades met again. Allen parried her sword with one dagger and sliced her across her thigh with another. He noticed immediately that without Mana Shroud’s ability to cover his daggers with miasma, he couldn’t channel Maelstrom through them, which was mildly frustrating.

Allen didn’t let up with his attacks, but Camila was also oddly effective with her single sword, even managing to counterattack whenever possible. Allen was just too quick and flexible though; he had gotten many cuts in after less than thirty seconds, taking nothing in return. In the back of his head, he new that all the damage Camila took was actually just accelerating her Rage skill and making her stronger, but he wanted a good fight anyway, hence the reason none of his weapons were poisoned or anything.

Camila’s sword suddenly pulsed with a red light before it blurred towards Allen with a crazy back-handed swing. He barely managed to arch backward with inhuman speed and flexibility, his various skills making the action possible. The sword whipped past his face, stirring up an intense wind, but Killer Instinct urged him to dodge again. He stayed calm and continued arching backward, elbows touching the ground as an axe embed itself into the dirt where his neck had been an instant before. In one fluid motion, Allen brough his legs up around his body, one after the other, and kicked as hard as he could given his position. One boot hit Camila across the face and the other carried through, bringing Allen smoothly back to his feet.

Ty laughed from the sideline while Camila shook her head and shot Allen a look somewhere between fury and embarrassment.

“Fucking fuck,” Camila cursed.

“You almost cut my head off you dumb bitch.” Allen fired off another pair of mid-powered Chaotic Bolts and prepared a few of his more hard-hitting spells.

“It wouldn’t have been that bad,” Camila said, waving him off as red miasma started rising off her. Then she threw her sword and boosted herself forward again with far more grace than a typical Berserker should have. She changed directions, vaulting off solid air, and came flying at Allen with a spinning axe move.

Allen dodged backward, narrowly escaping the rusty sword that came flying at his chest. He activated Cloak of Chaos, feeling a nearly invisible distortion of white miasma flow over his whole body. He caught the axe with his daggers in a cross block and shifted his body to avoid the brunt of Camila’s kick to his ribs. He felt the Cloak absorb part of the damage while also spending mana qworking against whatever magical attack Camila had used with the blow.

Camila jumped back a step and her magic flared. Allen fired off a full-powered bolt and Camila tanked it like a punch with a visible grimace. Her magic gathered and she stepped forward into a strong stance and threw a straight left punch.

Allen simultaneously used Havoc and fired another full-powered Chaotic Bolt. A wave of red miasma surged off of Camila’s fist at the same time that an aura or of distortion expanded from Allen. Camila’s magic backfired and turned her arm into a bloody and floppy, purple mess, then a bolt struck her in the face with nearly twice the speed of the last one.

Allen tanked most of the magic that came at him. It felt like getting hit by a bus that was on fire; it did a lot of damage, but it was actually manageable given his stats. He was only thrown back a few meters, and the magic was strangely broken and fizzled out by Havoc when it had reached him.

Camila had a hand on her broken nose as she stumbled back a few steps. She managed to get her eyes back on the fight in time to see Allen lunging at her from a low angle. She brought her axe up to block his path, but he dodged and dug in with a hard liver punch enhanced by a half charged Chaotic Maelstrom.

The magic rushed out of Allen’s fist, bludgeoning Camila’s gut from the inside out. She staggered back with a sharp cry. Allen used Havoc again, observing how the magic got riled up even more. It lingered like a firecracker going off inside the Berserker’s body, causing her to tense and shake as if she were getting pummeled from every direction.

He was about to let loose with Chaotic Bolts when Camila just doubled over and vomited chunky red bile and blood all over the ground. Allen couldn’t be certain, but not all the chunks looked like they were ever food at one point. The attack was still going off inside her more than ten seconds later, even as her Rage skill continued to build power from the damage.

“Shit… fuck me,” Camila coughed. She was still trembling on the ground when both skills finally finished up. Allen counted twenty seconds in total.

“Not as instantly lethal as Chaotic Destruction was, but many times more fun,” Allen thought to himself while Amelia got busy healing the Berserker. Needless to say, the fight was over. Allen checked himself quickly, finding a few broken ribs and a few cuts here and there. Nothing serious. He chuckled a little at Camila looking up at him with a vengeance. He shook his head and grinned. “You’re going to need the two-hundred threshold and then some before you’ll even stand a chance, Camy,” he said. “Either way you should fight Nora next; she needs a beating or two,” he added, hearing someone suck in a breath from off to the side.

The Berserker just groaned and coughed.

“What skill was that?” Amelia asked, searching around on Camila with her magic. “Her heart was imploded and I’m still working on putting her liver back together.”

Allen shrugged. “Chaos channeled destruction,” he said. “Or just, my new favorite skill.”