“Any idea what we’re going to find on the other side of this door?” asked Roy, staring at the thick slab of metal that’d been moved from its resting position by a few inches.

“Stairs, first of all,” replied Stacy, cycling through the various filters in her visor.

“I mean enemies,” Roy angrily retorted. “And traps, and whatever’s there that isn’t so obvious.”

“Well, there isn’t anyone on the other side, so whoever came through here probably ran like hell to warn the others when you deployed the knockout gas. And who puts traps next to the break room?!”

“Either way,” interrupted Scout, placing a hand on the metal handle. “Let’s still go with care, I wouldn’t be surprised if they planned out an ambush against us-”

As soon as the squad leader pulled open the door, a burly arm dressed in blue flannel grabbed his jacket and pulled him forward.

“Shit!” shouted several squad members as they pulled out their weapons and ran towards the unexpected attacker.

When they made their way to where they last saw Scout, they were met with a spiral staircase built around an incredibly wide tunnel that led straight down. And as they looked down to see how far it went, they saw their team leader and the previously hidden guard grabbing at each other as they both fell through the center hole.

“Hey, do you think any of us can shoot that asshole without hitting Scout?” asked Stacy, a hint of embarrassment in her voice. She waited a moment for an answer. “Yeah, I thought so.”

“Hey Scout!” shouted Roy. “Don’t die on the way down! We’ll be right there to pick you up!”

Squad Charlie’s leader wrestled with the large man as the two plummeted down at near-terminal velocity. What started out as a series of punches and grapples as the two wrestled to see who would be the others’ impact cushion at the end of their journey, quickly turned into a much deadlier battle when the blue-dressed guard pulled out a knife.

“Two can play at that game,” Scout mumbled to himself over the sound of air screaming past his ears as he pulled out a knife of his own. Its body was a smoky silver, surrounded by deep bluish-gray edges. "Tungsten carbide over a titanium body, I'd like to see your pig iron beat that!"

“[Volcano’s Edge]”, replied the opponent as his knife began to glow white hot.

“Hey, I’m not done with this dick-measuring contest yet,” the team leader chuckled to himself as a series of magical glyphs began to light up on his own blade as he tightly gripped its handle.

The two began exchanging blows as they continued to fall down the stairwell. The blades sent sparks flying as they collided, and arms struck each other to block what would otherwise be deadly hits. The two were near-evenly matched in their free-fall, but the guard had one advantage.

“[Unblockable Slash]!” he shouted, as Scout’s arms slowed to a snail’s pace, allowing the white-hot blade to cut into his side.

The team leader let out a scream as the searing pain gave him back control over his body. With a forceful kick, he pushed the now complacent guard out of the way and disengaged himself from the fight long enough to take count of the damage.

Despite the color of his enemy’s blade and the burning pain it left on the point of contact, Scout’s wound looked perfectly fresh, leaking a line of blood that trailed upwards as he continued to fall through the seemingly never ending tunnel.

An idea came to the squad leader’s mind as his enemy kicked off a side wall and re-entered the fight, positioning himself above as he began wildly slashing downwards, using gravity to his advantage. Scout couldn’t help but smile in response. All according to plan.

As Scout dodged the flurry of blows, he made sure to angle himself such that the trail of blood flew straight into his opponent’s face, covering his eyes in the crimson liquid. Temporarily blinded, the man struggled to clear his vision, but not before Scout once more disengaged from the fight and slowly made his way above him.

The first thing the guard felt as he regained his sight was some sort of bottle being pushed into the waistline of his pants. As he reached for it, the container broke, releasing a swarm of vines that bound his limbs together tightly to his body. The second sensation was that of Scout kicking him with all of his strength, sending the man speeding downwards even faster than before. And the third thing…

Scout winced as he heard the guard impact the ground with a terrible thud. Even through the wind blowing past his ears, the leader could still make out an awful snap. The guard wasn’t getting back up. But there was still the issue of him making it out of this in one piece.

“Alright, so what are my options?” he opined to himself. “Emergency recall? I don’t think that’ll get rid of my velocity, and I doubt a hospital cot is going to catch me going this fast.”

Scout looked through the remaining spell scrolls and grenades on his person, and picked out what he felt would give him the best chances at survival before uttering a quick prayer, and tossing most of them at the floor and walls.

The first bottle hit the ground, and a rust-colored liquid quickly spread across the floor, dissolving the stone-hewn floor into a large puddle of mud. Next, several vine spell grenades hit the wall closest to Scout at different heights, creating a tangle of brambles every several yards down. Finally, a bottle of gold-flaked paint was hastily opened that Scout used to inscribe several runes onto his armor.

“This had better work!” he shouted as the runes began to glow.

The collection of vines on the wall caught the man and quickly broke, but not without first taking away some of his velocity. The extra few seconds they added to the fall granted the roughly scribbled runes enough time to activate and bend space-time around the man to start messing with his velocity, slowing Scout down to the point the fall would be survivable, but quite debilitating. And finally, the mud pit at the very bottom, which was now at maximum size, took the last bit of the force to make the final impact only painful.

“Aaah!!!” Splat. Scout fell into the pool of liquid earth, and quickly rose to the top for another breath. After which he let out another scream. “Fuuuuuuck!!! That hurts!”

The leader fished himself out of the puddle and laid down in a corner of the room underneath the staircase, curled up in a fetal position, as he waited for the pain to subside. By the time the rest of his team made their way down to meet with him, the worst of the terrible sensations had subsided. With a grunt, the man lifted himself back up to his feet and regarded the rest of his squad with an annoyed look.

“What?” asked Stacy. “It’s not like we could’ve shot him from all the way up there without also hitting you.”

“You said there wasn’t anybody there,” replied Scout.

“Oh shit, yeah! I did! I swear, he didn’t show up on any of the visors, and I even double-checked!”

“So was it the door?”

“No, I could still see the rest of the room, just not him.”

“Maybe he had some kind of System Skill that blocked it out?” opined Roy.

“Could be, he was doing some pretty crazy things on the way down, like making his knife glow white-hot, and make my body freeze up to keep me from blocking a hit. I thought our armor bypassed that kind of thing.”

“Speaking of armor, you got hit through it!” exclaimed one of the other soldiers as he rushed over to Scout with a first-aid kit in hand. “How the hell did he manage to cut through Quicksteel?! That stuff’s supposed to make mithril look like glass!”

“As I said, he had some crazy Skills,” sighed their leader, offering no resistance to the iodine-soaked cloth being rubbed across his side. “No more risks from now on, and I mean it.”

The others looked at Scout with wary eyes.

“I mostly mean that for myself,” he replied with a nervous chuckle, scratching the back of his head. “Now we should be right next to the dungeon, and the kids. So let’s kick some ass and save some lives.”