It was right where I had thought it was, which was a relief. Part of me had been worried it was a stress hallucination, or a desperate thought puzzle to keep me from panic as I was eaten alive by sentient caustic slime. But as I approached the chair at the back of the otherwise empty room, I knew exactly what I was looking at. It was the trigger mechanism for a hidden door. There could be no reason at all to leave it in place otherwise.

I approached, a smile on my face as I ran my hand over the back of the chair. Cracked plastic cover crumbled at my touch and I felt the ancient, dry cloth beneath. The headrest was adjustable, so I moved it first all the way up, and then all the way down, in a shower of rust particles and broken old plastic.

The cube in the doorway farted, a long, thin, squeaky one, so I raised the shotgun and hit it with another taser slug to hold it in place. Then I flopped into the chair.

Dust, cloth particulates, and fragments of shattered plastic cover flew, and I reflexively closed my eyes against it before remembering that I was wearing a helmet. The air even smelled fresh in there. It was amazing. Still, nothing else happened, aside from my cartoon starfish appearing in the corner.

“Thanks for the charge, I guess.” The cartoon gestured at a scattering of plastic particles and frowned. “These suck.”

I ignored it. Something was better than nothing, and my concern was on finding the secret door I knew was here. Preferably before that cube got in here with me.

I started rocking in the chair, trying to feel if it was activated by leaning back or forward. The thing was solid, jutting from the concrete floor on a thick steel pillar. It didn’t move back or forth, only made more dust and bits of plastic fly into the air. I started to get nervous and stood back up.

My shotgun was low, so I reloaded it from my bandolier. The other, empty one was in the way, so I slid it off and dropped it on the floor. It was probably worth a few morties, even slime damaged, but I wanted to be light if it came to running again. I shook my arms loose and breathed out my stress.

“Okay. Think. If I were a secret door, how would I be activated?” I whispered to the dark.

I shook my head and walked over to the wall across from the chair. Running my hand along the wall told me that it had a long solid line in it, from floor to ceiling, but when I ran my hand far enough in either direction, I could find another, exactly the same. Perhaps it was just concrete blocks fitted together.

I turned back and shot the cube again, bringing forth an angry sounding squeal and another round of violent jiggling. The damn thing was still coming, each jiggle moving it a little further and further in. The block of it now protruding into the room was hanging down and growing larger in spite of the taser slug.

So I hit it with another. That stopped it fully, and I turned to figure out the chair.

I flopped back into it and sighed. “Shit, maybe they just forgot this one. Or couldn’t get it uninstalled.” I glanced to the floor on either side of me and saw brackets in the concrete, where other barbershop chairs had been. Each of them looked like mine but was only bolted into the floor.

This one, the pole went into the concrete.

I breathed out my anxiety with a quick session of Molls’ meditation and went to work on the chair.

First, I pressed on the foot pedals, as hard as I could. The metal bracket holding them in place bent, and I gave up. Next was the armrests. The left was solid, but the right clanked just a little when I hauled up on it. That had to be it.

I began wrenching on the armrest, as hard as I could. My back and shoulders started to hurt, but I hauled on it until something in the concrete floor made the signature sound of rusty metal screaming against rusty metal, and the wall in front of me went, ‘thunk.’

“Oh thank Pasta,” I breathed in a rush.

Part of the wall slid open a little, and I jumped up in glee to check on the cube. It was mostly in the room with me already, so I hit it with another two slugs from my shotgun and turned back to the secret door to get it the rest of the way open.

The door was heavy. It was just a slab of concrete, filled with complex metal locking mechanisms, so when I hauled back on it, it moved only slowly. The cube behind me began to vibrate and emit noises again, which spiked my fear. With the sudden rush of adrenaline, I hauled the door open and roared at the Sleem cube behind me.

The instant it was open enough for me to fit inside, I rushed in and reversed direction on the door. I could see the Cube enter the room fully and start racing toward me as the heavy block of concrete and steel groaned back into position and closed behind me. The cube hit the other side and immediately began trying to pull it back open with a sucking sound.

I had my hand on a long, embedded bar that acted as a door handle, but there was a large metal wheel in the center that almost certainly locked it. Using my left arm, I hauled the door back against the Sleem outside, and reached for the wheel with my right.

Thankfully, it spun easily after a brief instant of resistance, and the loud thunk of locks sliding into place filled the secret room I hid in. I could no longer hear the cube outside, which gave me a lot of hope that the seal was good enough to keep it out, so I breathed a huge sigh of relief and turned to see what I had found.

Corpses. Mummified corpses, three of them, stared at me from the center of a small, but well-furnished room. One corpse was leaned back in a lounge couch behind an oak coffee table, full army uniform and hat in place. According to the bars and rank insignia on his skeletal chest, this man was a brigadier general, and his name was Tomson. Behind a small bar at the other side of the room, another corpse was laid out across the bar, having fallen forward upon death. His mummified skull had fallen off at some point, and stared at me from where it had rolled, skeletal jaws gaping. A dried bloodstain on the wall behind him indicated his cause of death to be a close range shotgun blast.

As did the ancient shotgun on the floor at my feet, still in the clutches of the room’s third and final corpse. A mummy in a lab coat had fallen to his knees, and then to his face, after killing both other men. His other hand held a large caliber handgun, pointed vaguely at the general. When I checked closer, I confirmed that Brigadier General Tomson had been shot in the chest. The bullet had punched directly through his sternum, and the couch behind him was stained and torn by the bullet.

I had been creeped out when I first turned around, but that passed quickly. “Whew, just some dead folk.”

I turned over the dead scientist at my feet and grimaced away from his face. He had been smushed against the concrete as he mummified, and it was gross. His chest had three small holes in it, surrounded by ancient brown bloodstains. His name badge read “Experimentation. Chief Director. Dr. Franklin.” Other than that, he had no distinct features. Plain clothing beneath a long white lab coat, and a crushed pair of thin spectacles was all that remained.

The dead man behind the bar was in uniform as well, though his cap had rolled away with his head when it had fallen. I lifted him to find his upper torso a destroyed mess. The shotgun Dr. Franklin used to kill him tore away his badge and rank, but I found a business card tucked into a money clip in the rear pocket of his fatigues. Rear Admiral Andre Favel, of the US Navy, appeared to have died at the hands of a civilian scientist in a secret bar in a secret army base buried beneath the Arizona desert. Both he and the general were still holding their own weapons, 1911 colts that reminded me of Hord’s.

As I explored the room, I took in several sights that interested me. I slowly realized I had entered a treasure vault. There was a jukebox in the corner, fully furnished and filled with perfectly preserved vinyl records. On the coffee table near Brigadier General Tomson, a stack of 1970s era Playboy magazines rested beneath a layer of thick dust. I counted fourteen in total, each of them consecutive months.

Then, behind the bar was a stash of old dusty bottles filled with alcohol. Many of them still sealed, and several had labels I struggled to read or recognize. One I did recognize from an old Wild West museum I had once visited. It was a rare Irish whiskey, and the museum had valued it at fourteen thousand dollars for an intact bottle. Rear Admiral Favel was wearing a large gold pinky ring as well, studded with shiny stones.

But the kicker was an oversized jar sitting on the bar. It contained brown, murky liquid and a tiny round shape. Some kind of egg, was my only guess, but leathery and scaled. The jar had a thick metal handle on the top that appeared to twist open. It also had a plaque at the bottom, which read ‘Experimentation. Eyes Only.’ I decided not to touch it.

The room had a clear and obvious exit at the back, a narrow hallway that led to a set of batwing doors installed in the concrete. The wood was shriveled and cracked, but the springs still worked. They screamed and showered rust when I touched them, so I decided to crawl underneath instead.

I had collected the weapons but had to leave the shotgun. Its barrel was so corroded and filthy that it was pointless to try and use it. Three new handguns swung heavily at my side, in the still wet bag, as I crawled carefully under the doors. When I stood and looked back at the room, I decided to try and sell its contents.

I hadn’t known if it would work or not, but a BuyMort Pod rippled into place with a quick blast of burnt ozone. For a haul like this, one had been automatically sent. It began flashing items around the room, seemingly at random, and warping them away. Mr. Sada’s MortBlock didn’t extend this deep, and it seemed like the Sleem didn’t bother using one, or perhaps theirs was too deep.

Either way, I sold the contents of the entire room, including the dead bodies of a clear government conspiracy gone wrong.

A long, dark hallway extended away into the distance in front of me, so I walked away while the pod did its business. I didn’t care for the smell when they arrived and departed, but I happily scanned through my sales. My luck was turning, that room had been a treasure vault. I was immediately rich, and the sales kept coming in.

Purchase: Intoxicant, alcohol, Nu-Earth whiskey, circa 1821. Rarity, rare. Quality, excellent. 480,784 morties dispensed.

Purchase: Intoxicant, alcohol, Nu-Earth rum, circa 1941. Rarity, rare. Quality, excellent. 56,420 morties dispensed.

Purchase: Intoxicant, alcohol, Nu-Earth vodka, circa 1879. Rarity, rare. Quality, excellent. 78,014 morties dispensed.

The stash of booze netted me a nice windfall. The Playboys didn’t bring in as much as I had thought they would, but a solid hundred thousand morties for the whole set didn’t feel like I got robbed either. Even the table, couch, and corpses got me paid, though it was nothing compared to the record player, and its contents.

Purchase: Information Storage Medium, polymer based disc, grooved. “Miles Davis, Kind of Blue.” Rarity, rare. Quality, excellent. 67,010 morties dispensed.

Purchase: Information Storage Medium, polymer based disc, grooved. “Elvis Presley, That’s Alright.” Rarity, rare. Quality, excellent. 62,648 morties dispensed.

Purchase: Information Storage Medium, polymer based disc, grooved. “Elton John, I’ve Been Loving You.” Rarity, rare. Quality, excellent. 69,000 morties dispensed.

The list of records went on. The machine had stored thirty of them, and each one sold in the range of forty to seventy-five thousand morties. The record player itself had landed me another 375K, which I was not complaining about at all.

The only thing that put a damper on my mood over the treasure room, which made me a multimillionaire in moments, was the final purchase BuyMort had made from me.

Purchase: Bioweapon. Reaper Hound egg. Rarity, unique. Quality, good health. 2,112,000 morties dispensed.

That instantly felt like a mistake. Not the minor kind either, the kind that makes you get panicky in the chest and feels like your heart might stop when you realize it kind of mistake.

Bioweapon.

That word stuck out, as did the rarity being unique. If BuyMort had never seen one of these before, how the hell could it know it was called a ‘reaper hound,’ which frankly terrified me.

I stood in the empty concrete hallway, listening to the blood pounding in my ears as I thought about it.

Then it came to me.

They didn’t need any eggs to know what it was. This place had obviously been the facility they originated from, but if there were any records or even just research papers that had survived, they would provide enough of a description of one to recognize it and assign it value.

My psychic cell phone was out and in my hands before I realized it, and I went to my new app. I needed to ask it something specific. Most of the statistics were in menus, assembled by popularity, accessibility, and several other metrics. There was a search feature, however, which was necessary simply because of how big the database this app accessed was.

“How many items dealing with the ‘reaper hound’ bioweapon have been sold to BuyMort since Nu-Earth joined the market?” I asked.

My hope had been that it would be specific enough to provide a specific result, and I was not disappointed. Terrified, but not disappointed. The app immediately spit a number at me, four thousand, nine hundred and thirty two items. I winced, blinked a few times in the dark, and thought of my next question.

“When were those items sold?” I whispered.

The answer made it worse. Four thousand, nine hundred and thirty one items had been sold three days prior, almost immediately after BuyMort had arrived and our planet joined its market. The final item had been just a few minutes ago.

Now, I’m not much of a creative sort. I look at a starry night, and it looks nice to me, but I don’t get filled with words to describe it. Generally, my ability to visualize the ramifications of my actions was limited to small scope things that would directly affect me. This one, however, didn’t take much to imagine what had happened.

A moment later, when I went to try and purchase the egg back, I confirmed my own fear. An affiliate had purchased it directly from BuyMort, via standing purchase order. It had been lost to me the instant BuyMort zipped it away.

I had completed their set for them, whoever they were.

It occurred to me that this was a big part of why aliens followed BuyMort around like this. Early days on a new planet offered untold possibilities. Like a new bioweapon to exploit, because the hairless apes on this world were too stupid to avoid selling important things like eggs they don’t understand.

I breathed out the fear and stress, actively remembered that I was still scrambling for my life and took some solace in the fact that I really needed the morties. Then I did the only thing I could, which was set an alert on the app for any further action on reaper hounds in BuyMort and focused on being trapped underground in a Sleem lair.

Thankfully, now I had millions of morties to help me with that scenario. Four million and change, to be specific. After all of my sales had tallied up, my personal morties total was 6,382,400. More than enough to get equipped for the fight I was already in. Now I knew BuyMort would send a dimensional pod if the transaction was worth it, and my intention was to make it exactly that.

The first thing I bought was more grenades. This time, I went with Clippy’s suggestion and paid for anti-Sleem chemical grenades straight from the ad. Each one was a guaranteed Sleem kill on contact and would cause the Sleem’s own body to become an explosive device.

The ad had shown several Sleem being killed from exposure to just one in their group, so I hoped it lived up to the marketing. That was exactly what I needed them for. A brand new, full-to-the-brim satchel cost me just over five-hundred thousand morties and got me thirteen grenades.

Each one was beautiful. The glass was crystalline, and the liquid, which had appeared at first to be pure black, was almost alive with color up close. Hints of dusty pink, green, and deep sea blues all chased each other through the inky liquid, which sloshed and crawled up the sides of the grenades on its own like ferro-fluid. A golden colored key at the top was the trigger element. Once wound twice around, the grenade was armed. There was no timer, instead the external structure would break upon contact with any surface or negative pressure environment, like the inside of a Sleem’s body.

A new set of ads popped up and I almost shut them down, strictly out of habit. But the words anti-Sleem in a dazzling 3-D purple and gold really grabbed my attention and I couldn’t help but wander down the rabbit hole. The first option was something called SleemShield (Epic defense against Sleem infestations. Afraid to leave the house? Tired of imagining your skin peeling, charred and broken like the outside of a baked potato? Well, worry no more with the power of SleemShield! 10,000 morties, 3.7 stars).

I liked it. I liked the confidence of the ad and the look of the thing. It was simple, no frills attached. And for anti-Sleem protection that price looked amazing. But those stars, they bugged me. I rolled up the review page and saw a variety of generic 5 stars, all practically the same, empty words, one after another. Then I saw the one stars. Stuff like “My brother tried gardening in one of these. Last I saw of him he was SleemFeed.” There were no two, three or four stars between them.

A scam product. I dismissed it. There had to be something better. I almost called Clippy, remembered the earlier moaning, and dumped the idea. I could do this myself. I shuffled through the ads in front of me and another ad, an Affiliate, jumped on before me.

Stop living in fear. Start living in glory.

Over the words ran man so covered in tactical gear and armor that he might as well have been a robot. He ran through a mess of space monsters, blasting them to pieces with some sort of laser-based minigun while he booted knee-high raptors, their fangs glistening with saliva.

Fuck yeah. I dove into the ad.

A new affiliate, Zalf Multi-MortBlock Industries, swarmed over me. Everywhere I could see stood a vast warehouse of goods. And sitting right in front of me were a variety of sleek, wrinkless body suits, each one smooth and shiny in the metaphysical lamps above them.

A sign declared them all to be anti-Sleem suits, and they ranged from the thin and cheap to the complicated and expensive. As I browsed them I noticed that the ones that really didn’t catch my eye faded from the rack, until I had just three choices before me. Each one an anti-Sleem suit, designed to protect against their acid, even if fully enveloped. They were full body suits, which extended up over any helmet protection and sealed fully with a zipper at the front. The suits appeared to be made from some kind of plastic material, but upon closer inspection I could see that they were slick. Oily somehow, with a liquid coating on the outside of the suit that never dried or transferred. I examined them more closely.

SleemDreem — A multidimensionally proven design that provides optimal protection against even the fiercest of Sleem hordes. Dream easily with SleemDreem. 100,000 morties. 4.7 stars.

King’sPlate Elite — Stop grabbing just what is necessary. Excel. Introducing King’sPlate, the latest in Zalf Multi-MortBlock Industries’ War on SleemTM. In-built air-circulation prevents overheating and collapse from rigorous Sleem slashing while keeping their acid where it belongs, off your body in a squealing pile on the floor. 300,000 mories 4.9 stars.

The SleemSupreme — Acid-proof. Check. Air-conditioned? Check. Equipped with a shielding system that promises to eject the user from any Sleem that consumes them? You got it boss. Introducing all-new SleemSupreme bodywear. 640,000 morties. 5 stars.

I had the morties and I was stuck in the thick of it, so I’m not ashamed to say that I went all in and got the SleemSupreme. Maybe with that little beauty I’d actually survive this hellhole.

The pod warped in, a violet-edged portal opening up and allowing the sleek pod to slide on through. Instead of a fleshy-taped box the bodywear flopped out onto the floor in a splat of cool-smelling goo. I touched it tentatively, then with more certainty and slid it over my clothing in one deliciously-easy maneuver. I felt much safer. Untouchable, if the storefront was to be believed.

Feeling good, I popped back into my market history and funneled my way over to GARY’S “GET ‘EM GOOD” GUNS GARDEN. There’d been a lot of interesting bandoleers there and it was time for me to check out some of the more exotic ones.

ArcLark Flaming Streamers — Make your next party one to remember! ArcLark Flaming Streamers produce trails of flame that burn hot and bright across the perfect night sky. Great for camping out! 15 morties/shell. 4.3 stars.

Hey, Over Here Emergency Signaling shells — A white phosphorus shell with powerful second stage propellent, these shells give regular flares a run for their money. Perfect for signaling that passing plane. Available in every color. 200 morties/shell. 4.7 stars.

Gaucho Bolo — The Trippiest Round on the planet. Gaucho Bolo explodes into spinning chains and balls perfect for tripping fleeing bi-pedal opponents. The accuracy isn’t great but the results sure are. Perfect for catching escaped prisoners. 500 morties/shell, 4.3 stars.

Furious Flechette — Close range horror rounds that explode out of the barrel, swarming forward a cloud of razor sharp battle detritus. Pierces most hides and soft armors. Well-known for making someone’s bad day worse. 300 morties/shell, 4.5 stars.

Spinner-Whinnie Fast Slam — Some people think shotguns don’t have tactical range. Those people don’t have imaginations. Forget urban combat. Go sniper with the Spinner-Whinnie Fast Slam. These shotgun shells exit the barrel at a whippin’ Mach 4, breaking the sound barrier even as the belt through walls, tear apart a bird, and general destroy everything on their way to the target. 1000 morties/shell. 3.9 stars.

HYDRA-SPLIT — Multi-headed, self-guiding incendiary explosive rounds. A nightmare on the battlefield. Hydra-split is perfect home defense when you find thirty thieves breaking into your living room. One man on thirty? I like those odds . . . with HYDRA-SPLIT. 4000 morties/shell. 5 stars.

Laser-Boy Shellblast — Want the feel of real Terran stock and steel in your hands, but the blast power of freakin’ alien stormtroopers? Then boy do we have you covered with the Laser-Boy Shellblast. Each shell contains fused tellenium alloys that, when set off, convert to pulse energy. You read that right, one shell, one powerful fricking laser blast. That’s Laser-Boy Shellblast. The future and the past holding hands at last. 3050 morties, 5 stars.

All of them had their merits but, considering my circumstances, it felt best to go with the most expensive options. The HYDRA-SPLIT ammo promised multi-headed, self-guiding incendiary explosives and, I’m going to be honest, not only did that sound useful. It also sounded like something I wanted to see in action. I bought several of those.

I also got some Laser-Boy Shellblasts. I mean, firing a laser blast from a shotgun sounded perfect for slimes. You’d blast and then eject the shell like normal. No hassle or fuss.

Once my remaining bandoleer and shotgun were filled with good ammo, I tucked away my remaining taser slugs in the bottom of my grenade satchel. Didn’t want to waste them, but I was over stunning these bastards. I wanted them all dead.

Which is what I was thinking of when I made my last, and most expensive purchase. I’m going to admit it — this was an impulse buy. I’d been thinking that I needed a sharp and handy blade, a machete or maybe even a sword. And, as usual, a gleaming and sparkly ad invaded my mindspace. But this one, unlike most of them, was quite glorious. A curved sword sparkled within the confines of a fresh-smelling oasis. Over top all of it, in fully 3D caps, were the words FALCOR. The scene faded and words spread across my vision, even as a deep and powerful voice spoke the words from seemingly every direction at once.

ONCE UPON A TIME A SWORD MADE A BOY A KING.

OUR SWORD CAN MAKE YOU AN EMPEROR.

INTRODUCING FALCOR.

A wicked looking blade appeared in the space in front of me. It slowly revolved, showing itself off from every conceivable angle. It looked sharp enough to cut atoms, a scimitar-shaped blade well-balanced and set upon a gem-encrusted hilt. An electric hum rose from those gems, making my arm hair stand on end. What the hell was this thing?

IT SLICES. IT DICES. WATCH AS IT CUTS THROUGH THIS THICK LEAD PIPE.

A non-distinct humanoid figure seized up the sword, facing up against a large-ass metal pipe. With a single chop the pipe fell into two halves.

GASP AS IT CARVES THROUGH THIS OLD SOVIET TANK.

The same man jumped atop an old T-60 as it rumbled through the shadowy confines of a ruined urban environment, He hacked across its main gun, slicing it off at an angle. Then he shoved the blade through the driver’s hatch and the tank rumbled to a stop.

Goddamn.

SHAKE YOUR HEAD IN DISBELIEF AS FALCOR CUTS THROUGH TITANIUM BODY ARMOR.

A squad of plated soldiers clanked into view. The figure leapt through the air, practically hopping across the air, slashing and kicking, reducing them all to assumedly bloody piles of meat and mail.

YOU’LL BE AT THE CUTTING EDGE OF BLADE-BASED TECHNOLOGY WITH FALCOR, THE CHOPPING, LOPPING, LIFE-STOPPING DIAMOND SHARP WEAPONS MADE FOR HUMANS OF ALL AGES. 2,250,000 morties, 5 stars.

I was so excited that I almost selected the purchase option twice. When it arrived, I excitedly strapped it’s scabbard to my left hip and began going over the new owner’s manual. One of the nicer points of BuyMort was that it made keeping track of your stuff’s required reading easy. One of the less nice points is how it tricks you into buying shit. The very first disclaimer in my new swords manual explained that the marketing phrase ‘anti-Sleem’ did not mean the weapon was capable of damaging Sleem. It just meant that Sleem couldn’t damage it.

My new sword was sharp. Magically sharp, if the manual and its pure fantasy-novel theme were to be believed. I swung the sword at the concrete wall as a test, and it sank into the stone easily, before carving out a divot with a shower of dust. The weapon was light, and I had applied barely any pressure, so the amount of damage was surprising. It’s attached literature promised it would keep that edge, even if used in fencing with another from the same line. Each weapon was unique, the manual claimed, but the same vaguely defined ‘magical processes’ had been used to make each item for sale from the affiliate. They had a quick demonstration video I could watch to prove that their weapons didn’t sustain damage with use, but I chose to just believe that it was sharp and slipped it into its specialized scabbard.

According to the manual, the scabbard itself would be cut easily if care was not applied when drawing or sheathing the sword. All the scabbard did, according to the paperwork, was make the sword not sharp, so it could be safely stored. My manual advised against leaving the weapon unattended unless safely secured in its scabbard. Even just brushing this blade in passing could easily provide a mortal wound. I smiled as I read the safety section, it was comforting in its brutally cold assessment of harm from this item. But again, sadly, the one thing it didn’t do much to hurt was a Sleem. It would cut through them, but that wasn’t enough.

I still needed a melee weapon against the Sleem.

That led me back into the items store. The ad console seemed excited, which made sense since I’d fallen for its wiles and bought something that I didn’t really need yet. Ad boxes and popups were everywhere I looked.

Fuckin hell, I thought. I just need a melee weapon that can burn and cut Sleem.

And, like that, there came the image of a weapon that looked to be a mix of falchion and machete, made with extremely special material.

BLAZE SPLITTER - NEED TO SLASH AND BURN? JUNGLES IN THE WAY OF YOUR FUTURE FARMLAND? BLAZE SPLITTER HAS YOUR BACK. HACK AND INCINERATE, REDUCE NATURE TO NUTRITIOUS FARMLAND IN NO TIME. 2,000,000 morties, 4.7 stars.

I didn’t like the description. It spoke to all of the lack of foresight that plagued us even before BuyMort showed up. But, the truth was, the destructive power it foreshadowed made it sound extremely effective against Sleem. I bought it. A two-million mortie tool for hacking and slashing with cosmic fire.

The falchion was crafted primarily of white composite plating, which formed the entirety of the weapon, aside from a thin wire rail along the edge. This wire railing ran into a small hole at the top and bottom of the blade, where it vanished inside. Once activated by a button on the hilt, plasma would course along the railing, held in place by powerful magnetic containment. Adaptive heat shielding protected the hand of the wielder, but the residual heat could be felt if the weapon was anywhere near my own body. I noticed it was also getting very warm in the hallway very quickly, and the concrete was starting to char near where I had swung the weapon.

I’d always wanted a sword made of a star, and now I had one. The power drained quickly, but claimed it was rechargeable, in two interesting varieties. I could simply plug it in to most any power source, or I could leave it in its sheath, which was a misnomer.

They called it a sheath on the product page, but it was a docking station. If you pressed the falchion to the exposed outside of it, it would snap in place magnetically. The docking station itself charged from ambient radiation, and would recharge the weapon much slower than a direct plug in. Still, it was nice to have the option, and I happily plugged it in to charge after a quick test fire.

The weapon had been more violent than I expected when it activated. The plasma was loud, it burned the surrounding air, and it pulled my hand ever so slightly with its movement through the wire containment. My little section of the concrete hallway filled with thick, black smoke in a hurry, and I turned it off. I took a couple of practice swings with it before that happened, though, and came away very satisfied. It crackled as it moved through the air, and I needed to be careful of the heat it produced. Even my hand felt it, through the heat shielding in place on the handle.

My shopping spree left me just under a million morties in my personal account, but I felt much better equipped to survive the Sleem than I had when I entered this place. Even that amount felt like I had some of my new fortune left over, which I planned on spending if I ever got out of the Sleem’s dungeon.