There was thirty minutes left on Quentin’s ultimatum clock when Sam shut the door to his room, sat down on the bed, and opened up his menu. He tabbed over to the Guardian menu first, and found a score of achievements and notifications awaiting him. Half of the notifications were just about the new powers he’d gained when he bonded with Sally. The others were small ones, about damage taken or new areas explored.

The achievements were more substantial.

Achievement Unlocked: Death From Above!

You have killed an enemy while falling towards them from a great height. You have joined the immortal ranks of ‘all the other idiots who didn’t realize that it’s really hard to aim when you’re falling at terminal velocity’. Way to go Swayze!

Reward: You managed to not break both your legs when you hit the ground. This valuable experience has granted you DR/10 vs. Falling damage. Go ahead, jump off that third story balcony. It’ll only hurt a little now!

Achievement Unlocked: Looter Shooter

You have killed an enemy unit with a ranged weapon taken from one of its allies. Because bringing your own gun to a gunfight is smart, but going in and stealing a gun for a gunfight? That’s just badass.

Reward: +5% unarmed melee damage, +5% ranged weapon damage with weapons you take from an enemy.

Achievement Unlocked: Where’d You Go?

You disappeared. This is concerning. Please remember that actions taken outside of the System will not be eligible for bounties or rewards. Portable System generators are available upon request, should your newly freed status or work take you to more clandestine areas.

Reward: Admin Support Contact Code has been added to your message contacts.

Sam blew out a long breath at that one, and winced at the fizzing feeling in his brain as a new contact was added in.

He checked the messaging spell, and sure enough, he now had the ability to contact something called “Admin Support”. And apparently it was tied to the whole ‘freed unique mob’ thing he’d received the night before.

No way in hell was he messaging them, not without taking some very serious precautions, and maybe filling up his inventory with grenades, just in case.

The other achievements were for little things like taking his first hit from a ranged weapon, and gave no real bonuses for anything. He closed the tab after the last one faded away, then switched over to his Guardian Powers menu to see just what new things he’d gotten from his bonding with Sally.

“Holy damn,” he breathed, eyes wide. Cora’s abilities had been mostly defensive and construction-focused, little things meant to keep a guardian and his allies alive and to benefit the dungeon as a whole.

Sally’s abilities were… Not that.

— Offensive Guardian Power: Plunder! (Tier 1)

Description: This ability, when triggered, allows the Guardian to absorb the full essence of the next enemy they take part in defeating. Can use a number of times per day equal to the tier.

— Offensive Guardian Power: Raise The Flag (Tier 1)

Description: Generate an Outpost Core to extend the reach of the dungeon and convert territory outside of your control over to your control. Limited to 3 Outposts at Tier 1, with an extra 3xtier outposts for each subsequent tier.

— Offensive Guardian Power: Lead From The Front (Tier 1)

Description: Any ally within 10ft/level of you gains double essence from any source as long as you are engaged in combat with an enemy unit. Bonuses increase by 50%/tier in this skill.

Offensive Guardian Power: Hold The Line! (Tier 1)

Description: Once per day, the Guardian may expend all of their mana (minimum 50%) to grant temporary HP to all allied and dungeon units within 20ft/level equal to 20 times his current level. These temporary hitpoints will disappear when combat ends. Also grants 50% damage increase and DR/10 against all physical attacks.

“Holy shit,” Sam exclaimed, reading over the powers again just to make sure he’d seen them correctly. No wonder Rakun had leveled up so absurdly fast. He had probably selected the highest-level villagers, guards maybe, and slain them while that Plunder ability was active.

He thought back over the last week. He’d gained enough essence to take him from level 1 to level 6 even before the battle against the revenant and his minions. Now he was sitting on enough essence to take him past level 8. And even that was absurdly fast. Most adventurers, from what he remembered from Marie’s letters, gained one to two levels per week, assuming they were taking on quests or fighting creatures of the appropriate level.

And now not only had he surpassed that almost by an order of magnitude, he’d just been given the means to speed up his leveling.

He felt dizzy. And then he felt cold as he realized just what would have happened if he hadn’t defeated Rakun. Visions of the kobold revenant feeding off of the essence of high-level creatures like a vampire, growing stronger and stronger until he was unstoppable danced in his head.

And after a long second, the image shifted so that it was no longer Rakun, but himself.

Sam: Sally… These abilities are stupid overpowered. I could literally take over the world with this stuff if I wanted to.

Sally: Well duh. That was kind of the point. We were in a war against god, remember? You don’t win something like that with marshmallows and tickle fights.

He shook his head and closed out the tab, then took off his glasses and rubbed his aching eyes. Gods, it was closing in on suppertime, and he felt like he’d been running flat-out for hours on end now. It would be nice, he thought as he slid the glasses back on, if the universe would just give him some breathing room, just for a little bit.

“Might as well wish for a million sovereigns too,” he muttered. “Since that’d be about as productive.”

He opened his menu again and got back to work.

He’d accumulated almost 18 essence exchanges in the battle against Rakun, another 5 from completing the Hail To The King personal quest when he’d killed Reggie the undead T-Rex, and now had three more just from the battle against the minotaurs. Spending them on skills or abilities would take him from level 6 to level 9 in one fell swoop.

And then he’d be able to add even more powers to Thumb Bane, thanks to his Heirloom Weapon ability.

He paused for a moment as it struck him, perhaps for the first time, just how absurdly overpowered he’d become. He was barely past level 6 as it was, and he was routinely going toe to toe and winning against creatures ten levels his senior.

Part of it was his Guardian class, but it was also his harness, granting him powers far above his level. And Thumb Bane, which was practically a small Artifact in and of itself now. And that Unfettered class, allowing him to take abilities that would never have been open to him, which in turn allowed him to utterly break his build.

If he continued on like this, he was going to wind up…

“Powerful enough to fight a god,” he finished the thought aloud, the idea bringing a wry twist to his lips. “Well son of a bitch. We might actually have a shot at this.”

He spent the next twenty minutes spending essence. He had 26 exchanges to spend, but needed only 22 to get him to level 9, so he held those last 4 in reserve against some future need. One never knew when one would suddenly need to acquire a new skill to deal with an unforeseen problem.

Of those 22 exchanges, he put 2 into his Restless Dead ability, which shaved another minute off the time he would need to spend in the White Room before he could respawn. When he’d originally gotten the ability, he’d wondered at the wisdom of leveling up something that encouraged him to die repeatedly. But given the past week, and how often he’d been shuffled off this mortal coil, now he thought it might not actually be a bad investment.

2 more went into his Nightengale’s Touch power, allowing him to heal up to 300 HP now. 7 went into the ‘bite your kneecaps off’ ability, bringing it up to tier 4 and greatly increasing his combat effectiveness against creatures with size ‘medium’ or larger. It was a halfling ability that he’d been able to take thanks to his own Unfettered Access racial skill.

More essence was spent on his Construction skill, and on his Indiscriminate Justice power. And the last nine exchanges he dumped into his new Guardian powers, Bringing ‘plant the flag’ up to Tier 2, and ‘Plunder’ up to Tier 3. That power especially Sam was stunned by. It could, in theory, allow him to jump tens of levels at a time if he got the killing blow on something with a high enough level.

He decided to not attach any more powers to Thumb Bane just yet. The Heirloom Weapon ability was written in such a way that it actually rewarded a person for not adding powers right away, because the type of abilities he had access to increased with each tier.

And before he closed out the menu, he brought up the Tinkerer skill again and once again read it through closely. It gave him the power to change and alter abilities, for a small expenditure of mana and providing he had the requisite skills.

And the mad god had mentioned it, hinted that the skill had been his downfall, somehow.

I am going to have to experiment with this more, he decided. Starting as soon as he found a way to gain reliable access to the White Room. If the System was watching for keywords, it was probably watching for certain skills as well, and if this skill had brought down God, then it was almost certainly on the list.

Char: Samuel. It’s time.

Damn. Time flies when you’re leveling up.

Sam: Thanks Char. I’m on my way down.

Time to go get eaten.