Mortars arced towards them for overhead, only to be swatted away by rippling waves. Laser fire melted the metal debris that most everyone had chosen for cover. Nanomachines swarmed people to tear them apart piece by piece.

The invaders of Akmadouric's army retaliated with an assortment of kinetic abilities. Shadows from the walls pierced the androids. Laser beams stopped mid-flight, brought to a halt before the Photokinesis user but the size of the volleys were far too great for them to handle. The swarms of nanomachines were incinerated by the flames emmitted by a three foot tall rodent using Pyrokinesis.

After it was over, of the 527 invaders that had landed in the football stadium sized hallway along with Zack, only 382 survived the ambush. Scattered remains of both sides littered the ground to the point where there was no room to walk. The surviving invaders pressed forward with the Mid-tiermen taking point.

They explored the shafts and tunnels. Once, they passed through an archway and a guillotine like door sliced one of the Mid-tierman vertically in half. They were ambushed twice more but those were much smaller and far less successful.

Eventually they found a control panel filled with buttons, none of which were labeled.

A Tkiktch Mid-tierman walked up to it and said "This looks like a valuable resource." Her voice rose "Does anyone here have an ability to see through walls or something like it? We need to see the internal wiring of this thing. And more importantly we need to see where the wires lead so we can know what they affect."

Zack spoke up amongst the crowd "I have Echolocation"

"Everyone has Echolocation to some extent. But is your proficiency high enough to make out the individual molecular circuits from one another?"

"No. Actually is that even possible?"

"Then go away." the Tkiktch waved him off.

Zack felt a little humilated at the dismissal and walked away as practitioners of Metallokinesis and Electrokinesis approached the control panel.

A sort of base camp was being erected around the control panel with more Tkiktch barriers being created. Humans sat with Tkiktch and a few other assorted creatures. A semi-transparent gas orange gas creature hung overhead.

Zack was looking over the various groups which seemed to have been mixed species intentionally when he heard "Human, come over here. I am a master at Basic Creation, I'll make any food you desire out of thin air." a Tkiktch waved him over. He sat down with the group that contained the giant grasshopper, a few humans and Galroop the slime.

A Tkiktch with a nameplate that read 'Rlkchk' leaned over and said "What'll you have?"

Zack looked around to see the other humans eating food like pizza and burgers, like they were off on a holiday cookout 'Where do these people think they are?' with a shake of his head he said "I'll have the most nutritious and energy filled item on the menu that a human can eat. I'm on a mission and I need to be at my best." the other humans that overheard looked at him with a stupified look on their faces, a few gave him quick glares but he didn't care if he came across as an asshole.

The Tkiktch's antennae flicked in the air "The higher the caloric count, the higher the willpower cost. Let me see what I got for you." the giant bug opened one of her thick three fingered hands and a white mist formed and coalesced into a loaf of bread.

Zack took it and noticed that some vegetables were baked into it, then a screen came up and he read from it "Spinach, kale and aloe. How 'bout some water?"

"Coming right up." then dangled a finger over a cup and water formed within it.

Zack sipped it and said "Mineral water." then ate the bread and drank the water to make it go down easier. All the while admiring how the Tkiktch could make all these things without formless matter created by Akmadouric.

A military officer in a mechsuit walked up and started yelling at the humans in the circle "What the hell are you all doing lounging around so casually for? We are in hostile territory! We don't want to be caught with our pants down if the area shifts again."

Rlkchk was making and serving food but spoke up for everyone to hear "There's really no cause for concern."

The man's head turned, his barking ceased "What?"

"Do you see that gaseous creature overhead? Right now ze're in a deep state of concentration in order to keep zir Future Sight skill active."

Then a screen apeared in front of everyone within earshot

Future sight Allows the user to see thirty seconds into the future. Cannot see the results of one's own actions. Willpower cost: 800 per minute

Requires: Inner mind attunement, deep thought meditative state, intelligence 900+

Several people choke on their food as they look at it, but Zack simply blinked "Not the most terrifying skill I've ever seen. Although it'd be damn overpowered if it weren't for all those requirements, there's no way anyone could use it in combat." a few people turned their heads at his words, but he just kept eating.

Rlkchk replied "I've seen plenty of high-tierman and dieties use skills just like it."

Now everyone in the immediate vicinity stopped eating so they could give the conversation their fullest attention but instead of explaining, the Tkiktch just asked "Who wants another course?"

As he ate the last piece of bread, Zack said to no one in particular "I used to think that only Kerink had hatred towards Low-tierman or the newly initiated races. But now I'm starting to think that there's a hatred shared among Mid-tierman."

The Tkiktch's head perked up in attention "Your race failed one of Akmadouric's initial tests on arrival day. Your people had to be lured in through greed rather than eagerly helping Akmadouric save existence."

"So...what, all of the Mid-tierman are a bunch of altruists?"

"The best of the Mid-tierman spend their favor selflessly. Only buying combat upgrades and neglecting to purchase selfish things like immortality, secondary bodies and the revival of useless individuals. We are what's needed in order to win this war, but there are not nearly enough of us."

"Wait a minute." Zack blinked in understanding "All of the Tkiktch that died today are going to stay dead? That's insane. Why would you choose to die when there is a life saving method readily available?"

The giant bug's shoulders slumped "Each of us have lived for more than ten thousand years, we've all lived full lives. So death really isn't something we're afraid of at this point. But I suppose the real reason is the guilt that our race bears. Take my advice back to your people; there are harsh lessons to be learned by greedy races. Spare yourselves needless hardship over nothing."

'A ten thousand year old being. What could I learn from her?' Zack took a breath and frowned "Your advice is kinda worthless without the context of what happened. On my world, there are plenty of random anti-greed quotations from wisemen throughout the ages, yet greedy men still persist in their ways. The cold hard truth of it is that greed is simply a byproduct of a person's innate desire to survive. Anyone with the mentality of constantly gaining more will be in a better position to survive in the future. So I'm going to need a lot more than what you said just now."

Rlkchk's compound eyes focused on Zack "You are wise beyond your years. Very well, I'll tell you my people's sad history." but then she fell silent for several minutes, clearly not wanting to go into the details "Eons ago, the Tkiktch spread across the stars of our home dimension. Multiplying in droves and morphing their bodies to create a great many different types, eventually attaining the ability to consume all types of physical matter. The other races of the Tkiktch home dimension fought desperately but they were powerless against endless insectoid hordes, eventually being overwhelmed."

The ten foot tall Tkiktch insectiod creature hung her head in mourning "What could those sentients whom we destroyed have taught us? How many lives were taken? Their culture, knowledge, art and perspectives...so much lost."

'Conqueror's guilt' Zack paused for a moment before asking "Then what did your ancestors do?"

"They expanded until every single piece of physical matter had been consumed."

"Whoa, your people ate your entire universe!? But theres like a quintillion solar systems in my own home dimension. Your people couldn't have possibly eaten everything."

"With very high birth rates and a lot of time we did. Eventually we were forced to go through a period of cannabalism until the decision was made to put all Tkiktch into hibernation, in order to expend as little energy as possible while resting within a shared dreamverse created by the newest types." she rubbed her mandibles with one of her forearms "And that was the state we were in when Akmadouric found us."

Silence hung over the area as all the humans in the immediate vicinity froze. Most had heard insane facts about the multi-verse before but this was litterally jaw dropping for everyone present.

Zack was the first to speak "If these are the kinds of resources that Akmadouric has at his disposal, then how come he hasn't won the interdimensional war already?"

"That would be the nature of corruption and the nature of Deity Ulgroth himself, but all of you will get that information once you make Mid-tierman."

"But I want to know now."

A loud voice called out "Attention please! Your attention now. Everyone listen up." the Tkiktch that Zack and Becker had named Steve stood in front of the room "I need to clarify the situation we are all in."

The detachment of the invasion force gathered around and the Tkiktch renamed Steve spoke "After analyzing the control panel we have discovered many things but the bottom line is that we are inside a shifting and evolving maze of great complexity."

The audience murmured for a few moments and Steve continued speaking "I've spoken to the other detachments and it appears that there are buttons on that thing that only work in conjunction with another panel in another area in order open up certain sections. While others only seem to work during certain times. We don't even know if the entryway shift was triggered by the androids or whether they were just waiting for the set time."

Zack stated "So it's a puzzle."

The military officer walked to the front of the room and said "More like a battlefield that can turn upside down at any given time. As we've already experienced. What a nightmare."

Zack thought for a moment then said "Then what we need to do is use what little control we have to our advantage."