“A level 50 quest?” Neria Elissalde’s shocked voice came out of the military radio. A bump on the road almost threw it off the dashboard. “Are you sure?”

“I would send you a screenshot of my System Logs if I could,” Basil replied from behind his vehicle’s steering wheel. Plato looked at the forested road through the passenger seat’s window. “Never seen a level that high.”

“Me neither,” Neria replied. Basil heard her write down notes on the other end of the line. “First time I’ve heard of a ‘main’ quest as well. When will your friend arrive in Bordeaux?”

“In the afternoon if he flies straight without encountering monsters.” The army cleared the road between Dax and Bordeaux for evacuation efforts, but no route was entirely safe nowadays. “I suspect he’s connected to Dismaker Labs somehow. He visualized a dungeon’s past destruction with perfect accuracy.”

“I will show him the server’s remains if my superiors allow it. He could be the lead we are looking for.” Neria sighed. “The investigation stalled, Basil.”

“You couldn’t find any Dismaker Labs employees?”

“None that could enlighten us. The company’s top brass kept their true intentions secret from lower management.”

So Anton Maxwell and the Board remained unaccounted for. Basil would have expected one of them to appear by now.

“The military intelligence department is pushing for an expedition to UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris,” Neria said. “It’s one of the two places we could find answers, alongside Dismaker Labs’ European offices in Malta.”

“Oh right, good call.” Dismaker Labs partnered with UNESCO as part of their virtual reality project. It would make sense for the organization’s HQ to contain either incriminating documents or potential leads. “What are your superiors saying about it?”

Neria’s heavy sigh told Basil everything he needed to know. “We don’t have the means to send troops to Limoges or Toulouse, let alone Paris. The Incursion made monsters deadlier than ever, so it takes all our efforts to secure the Bordeaux safe zone.”

“Which is a victory in itself,” Basil reassured her. “You’re giving tens of thousands a home where they can live without fear of attacks. It will make more of a difference than hunting ghosts in Paris.”

“I try to see it that way. The situation is tough, but we’re making progress.” Neria chuckled. “Zachariel says hello by the way. We’ve finished evacuating the last of Dax’s citizens and he is being overworked curing them.”

“Did he get into any fights with atheists?” Basil mused.

“No, but now that you mention it… I’ve got interesting news on the faith front.” Neria marked a short pause. “Bordeaux has many religious communities and most of their leaders gained access to the Priest class. It took a lot of coercion on the army’s part, but we found volunteers willing to participate in… System-related experiments.”

Basil’s grip on the driving wheel tightened. “Go on.”

“Priests from Abrahamic religions can learn and cast the same Prayer spells,” Neria explained. “An Imam and a rabbi can cast the Mass spell in a Christian church, and an orthodox cleric can use the Salah spell to gain buffs. Their spellbooks are compatible. And then there’s the truly interesting part. Bordeaux has a small community of Buddhists. A few among them gained access to the Priest class too.”

“Can Buddhist Priests run the Mass?” Basil guessed with a chuckle. It amused him to imagine a Zen monk holding a church ritual.

“That’s the thing, they can’t.”

Basil smashed the brake pedal. His vehicle stopped in the middle of the road, bordered by trees on both sides.

“Hey Partner, why are we stopping?” Shellgirl called out at the back. “Enemies ahead?”

“I don’t sense anything,” Bugsy added.

“It’s nothing,” Basil reassured them. He started the car again after digesting this new information. “They can’t?”

“They can’t,” Neria confirmed through the radio. “Neither can Abrahamic Priests cast Buddhist Prayer spells. We’re currently searching for smaller sects to confirm the trend. The Metal Olympus Faction which General Leblanc is negotiating with is an alliance that worships Hellenistic deities.”

“Like Zeus?” Basil couldn’t help but laugh. “Seriously?”

“I know,” Neria replied with a chuckle of her own. “Their representatives say that their leaders are the gods of Olympus reborn through modern means.”

“Are they? It sounds crazy, but after fighting a dragon-snail from outer space nothing will surprise me.”

“So far I’ve only seen men and women coming from their faction.” Neria let out a sigh full of skepticism. “If they cannot cast Abrahamic-aligned spells, then it would suggest that Priests of different religions draw their magic from…”

Neria hesitated about what the correct words should be.

“Different sources.”

Basil read between the lines. Neria suggested that Priests potentially channeled the powers of different gods entirely.

“It could be a trick of the System,” Basil pointed out. “Restricting spells based on the caster’s personal beliefs and nothing more.”

“Mayhaps,” she conceded, “but normal prayers, well, they shouldn’t work by themselves. They’re petitions to a higher power asking them to grant a wish.”

“Yes, the System,” Basil insisted. “It’s the System that generates Prayer spells.”

“Could be, but you’ll admit the results are… interesting.”

“They are.” Though concerning might have been a better word. “What other experiments did you run?”

As it turned out, the French army also tested Basil’s hypothesis about Health Points: namely, if inflicting nonlethal damage repeatedly on a limb would eventually exhaust the target’s HP and kill them.

“After a point, the subject stopped taking damage,” Neria explained. Basil didn’t dare ask who or what they ran tests on. “His HP lowered again after we started targeting another body part. Our researchers believe that Health Points are either a rough representation of your general health or the aggregation of your body parts’ individual Health Points. Studies of amputees tend to accredit the second hypothesis. Soldiers who lost limbs in battle took a penalty to their maximum HP.”

Plato, who had barely listened to the conversation, suddenly glanced at his tail with concern.

“Plato, you won’t lose your tail if your Health Points drop too low,” Basil said with an annoyed sigh.

“Can you prove it beyond a doubt?” his cat asked with a terrified expression.

“You died two times already.” Basil snorted. “This System is a mess.”

“It’s scary when you think about it,” Neria replied with a heavy voice. “It bends the laws of nature, of physics themselves, with mathematics. Real world logic is being replaced with video game rules.”

“I know.” Sensing Officer Elissalde’s distress, Basil attempted to cheer her up. “But look at the bright side. Video games follow rules and math formulas. If we figure them out, we can exploit them and take back the Earth.”

“I would rather trade exploitable rules for familiar ones.” Clearly, his words failed to affect her. “Basil?”

“Yes?” From her tone, she was about to ask Basil a favor.

“If the opportunity presented itself,” she said, “would you join an expedition to Paris? To investigate the UNESCO headquarters?”

Basil took a long pause before answering.

“Isn’t anybody else volunteering?” he asked. “And I mean anybody?”

It wasn’t Basil’s job to investigate Dismaker Labs or Kalki’s missing memories, no matter what the System told him. He intended to weather the apocalypse and protect his home, end of the story.

Basil was no hero, no trained soldier, no exceptional investigator. He was a man who lived alone in the woods with his pets. There were better people around to become Overgods and uncover Dismaker Labs’ mysteries.

He hoped. If the world had no other savior than Basil, then mankind was fucked.

“I wouldn’t ask if we could send someone else,” Neria admitted. “Our resources are stretched thin protecting the population. Strange as it sounds, your team thrives in the new world. Call me naïve, but… if anybody can make the journey to Paris and return alive, it would be you.”

Basil could tell from her voice that Neria Elissalde said it from the bottom of her heart. Watching him slay a dragon must have left a powerful impression on her. Her faith in him touched Basil, although he considered it somewhat misplaced.

He considered her proposal for a long, agonizing minute, before giving his answer.

“Maybe,” Basil replied half-heartedly.

“Maybe?” an astonished Bugsy choked in the car’s back.

“Maybe?” Plato almost jumped from his seat. “Basil, are you alright? Did the zombies scramble your brains?”

“Maybe?” Neria sounded as shocked as Basil’s own cat. They knew him too well. “Do you mean it?”

“I’ve thought about what Steamslime told us,” Basil confessed. “About how other dragonlords wait for their chance to invade us. I want to live a quiet, peaceful existence away from this shit—”

“But you don’t think they’ll let you,” Neria guessed.

“No.” Steamslime’s allies learned Basil’s name from the System’s Logs somehow and would come for his head. The Apocalypse Force’s shadow also loomed over the region. Basil doubted that they would stop at conquering Lourdes. “Shitheads will keep barging at my doorstep, itching for a fight. The only way I see to prevent it is to make sure they can’t break into Earth at all.”

“We think the same then,” Neria said. “Unless stopped, Incursions will grow beyond our ability to manage.”

“If Paris potentially holds a solution to that problem, I’m willing to take my chances.” Basil raised a finger. He had a condition. “But it’ll be after winter. Too much shit to sort out beforehand.”

Basil needed to check on Vasi, gather intel from this ‘Tye,’ train House Garden so they could protect the house in his absence… a road trip to Paris would be long and fraught with danger. He couldn’t consider it without significant preparations.

“I expected as much,” Neria said; although her tone made it clear that she would have preferred a different answer. She would rather see Basil leave as soon as possible. “How are things on your end anyway?”

“No progress on the holomachine front, but we’re good otherwise. Storing food for the winter and preparing for Halloween.”

“You’re welcome if you want to celebrate it in Bordeaux,” Neria replied lightly. “I’ll dress as a vampire and you as a werewolf.”

“Wouldn’t children mistake us for the genuine article?” Basil mused. “I’ll think about it.”

“No rush. Take care, Basil. I’ll welcome your friend when he arrives.”

“Thanks, and take care too.” Basil switched off the military radio and focused back on the road. His car passed by a signboard indicating the path to the village of Orx.

“He’s done calling his girlfriend,” Plato informed the other monsters. “You can blabber nonsense again.”

“You can be friends with a girl without wanting to date them,” Basil replied. He was fond of Officer Elissalde. She was a kind woman, serious and reliable. But he wasn’t interested in dating her, or anyone for that matter. Celibacy fit him just right.

Basil peeked over his shoulder at the back of his vehicle. “Are you holding up, guys?”

After Basil’s Kangoo heroically perished in battle, the team scoured Dax for a replacement vehicle and eventually found an acceptable replacement: a Chausson 640 Titanium Premium. This seven-meter long white campervan was large enough to host the entire party, Bugsy included. The centimagma could slip inside after Basil removed shelf compartments from the camper and the doors separating it from the living area, much to his delight. The vehicle pulled an empty, hermetic trailer at the back to carry loot around.

Basil hadn’t managed to remove the smell of cannabis infesting the vehicle though. He suspected the previous owner of using his vehicle to ferry cheap drugs from Spain.

“I’m good, Boss,” Bugsy said as he squeezed in the back. The campervan included a shower, toilets, a kitchenette, and two window-facing benches. Rosemarine and Shellgirl occupied one each. “I sense many vibrations in the ground.”

“I blame the poor state of the road,” Basil replied. Grass and flowers he didn’t recognize had broken through the tar in many spots. “But be extra vigilant, Bugsy. We’re approaching the area where the elves ambushed Orcdad.”

“Mister, Mister, I see lights!” Rosemarine raised a vine through the open window. “Over there!”

Basil groaned when he saw red and green Aurora Borealis shine brightly under a blue, cloudless autumn sky. That could only mean one thing.

“Not again!” Plato complained. “Another dungeon?”

“Looks like it’s located in the village of Seignosse nearby,” Basil guessed from the auroras’ position. “Probably at the Black Pond wildlife reserve.

“Black Pond?” Shellgirl immediately grinned in excitement. “We’ve found oil?”

Basil crushed her hopes of getting rich quickly. “It’s called the Black Pond because it’s full of silt.”

“Shucks,” she complained.

“Why would we need an oil field anyway?” Plato pointed at abandoned vehicles on the side of the road. “Car dealerships are the new candy stores.”

“Gasoline degrades within months, kitty,” Shellgirl replied. “We can’t make long-term money out of scavenging.”

“How do you know that?” Basil asked, slightly curious. “The gasoline part?”

“I’ve read it in your library,” the mimic merchant replied with a smirk. “What, are you surprised? I invest in myself, Partner. A sharp mind in a healthy body, that’s my motto.”

“Good for you.” Basil had caught Shellgirl reading alone late at night after returning from her trading trips. The clam mimic was by far the party’s most studious member.

“When are we hitting the city’s library by the way?” Shellgirl pestered him. “I still don’t know how the Afghanistan War ended! Who won?”

Oh right, Basil’s school manuals stopped in 2018 at the latest. “I’m not sure you want to know the answer.”

Basil’s thoughts wandered to Neria’s revelations and his previous research on the Trimurti; the Hindu triad of Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the Destroyer. He suspected these three gods were somehow involved in the System’s creation, but he lacked books with the pertaining knowledge. He was planning to visit Dax’s library to find information about them before the battle with the Unity delayed his plans.

Different sources. Neria’s words echoed in Basil’s mind and shook his faith. Different gods. Vasi and Zachariel confirmed multiple gods existed in other worlds, but what about ours? What does it mean about God and… the rest?

“We’ll make a stop at the library on our way back,” Basil decided. He needed to investigate further, to understand what the hell was going on. “Any book you wanna take with you?”

“Travel and tourism books,” Shellgirl replied.

“Really?” Basil had expected business books. “Why?”

“I understand you want us to develop locally, Partner, but the world… it’s so big!” Shellgirl glanced at the skies beyond her window. “Do you know that on the other side of the planet, there are mountains that rise high enough to pierce the clouds? That coral gathered in a great barrier in the eastern land of Australia?”

“I know,” Basil replied. “Our world is full of wonders.”

She gave him a sharp look. “Did you see them? The real wonders, not the photos?”

That was the killer question, wasn’t it? Basil sighed. “No, I did not. I never had the money to travel.”

“Then it’s another reason to grind it out, Partner.” Shellgirl put her hands behind her head. “I wanna see the Atlantic Ocean, and the Pacific too!”

“What’s an ocean?” Bugsy asked. The centimagma was only born months ago in the marsh and had never seen a water body bigger than a river.

“It’s a lake that spans the whole horizon!” Ever the merchant, Shellgirl hyped up the sea as if it were the best product in the world. “You can regenerate your Health Points and raise castles on a sandy shore called the beach, climb water walls called waves, and fight fish monsters called sharks for easy levels!”

“Raise a castle? Like a dungeon?” The more Bugsy heard, the more enthusiastic he became. “Awesome! Can we try?”

“Mister, can we go to the ocean?” Rosemarine joined in. “I will drink it all and dry up the land!”

“We could,” Plato said. “The beach is ten minutes away from Orx. It’s been a while since we last visited it.”

Since René, Basil thought. “You hate water, Plato.”

“But I love giant litter boxes.” Plato gave his owner the kitten stare. “Come on, Basil… for me. Do it for me.”

“Please, Boss!” Bugsy whined at the back, echoed by the rest of the party. “Can we go to the beach?”

Basil glanced in his rearview mirror. Bugsy and Shellgirl had taken a page out of Plato’s book and pulled the heartstrings. The former didn’t quite manage to look cute with his big serpentine eyes, but the latter reminded him of an anime loli about to cry. Rosemarine, who had no eyes, simply clocked a handgun with her vines.

Basil saw the writing on the wall and surrendered to the call of democracy.

“Alright, children, alright,” he said while rolling his eyes. “We’ll go to the beach once we find a replacement rooster.”

His party welcomed the announcement with shouts, laughs, and Shellgirl’s joy at receiving a free holiday.

After minutes of travel, the campervan finally reached Orx… or what remained of it. A few hundred souls once dwelled in the village, but Basil saw no humans in its empty streets. Vines, moss, and alien flowers covered the houses from the smallest walls to the tallest roof. Overturned, rusting cars blocked most of the streets. A scant few months had passed since the apocalypse and nature already recovered its rights.

With a little help from the System, Basil thought as he observed the landscape. Glowing flowers he did not recognize grew on vines; the moss covering most walls glowed bright green; mushrooms larger than dogs infested the village’s streetlights. The dungeon’s influence mutated plant life into a new, unnatural ecosystem; one that spread at an alarming rate. Thank God I destroyed the Barthes’ server before we reached this point.

Basil drove through the village without stopping. Bugsy didn’t detect any large threat or animal in Orx’s ruins and the party saw no petrified citizens in the street. The Unity hadn’t targeted this settlement.

“Where is everyone?” Rosemarine asked.

“Dead or fled,” Shellgirl replied grimly. “Monsters likely ate ‘em all and moved on.”

Unlike Dax, Orx didn’t have a police department or army base to defend the population. The Apocalypse spared no one. In Basil’s mind, the village’s fate was yet another warning to avoid large settlements like the plague.

Orx led straight into the natural reserve next door. Steep banks of mud and reeds surrounded an enormous lake covered in water lilies. Red alien algae had started to colonize the waters and tainted them with a crimson tint. A single artificial bridge of rock and dirt crossed the lake in its center.

“Alright guys, we’re in enemy territory now,” Basil warned. “We’ll catch anything with feathers.”

“And if a monster has fur?” Rosemarine asked. “Can we eat it?”

Basil dispensed a piece French-Bulgarian wisdom. “If it walks, it’s edible.”

“I can’t wait for the next fried chicken night,” Bugsy said with enthusiasm. “Last episode teased a new badass villain!”

“Yeah, Major Chicken & The Meat Brigade takes a darker turn with the introduction of Emperor Vegan’s right-hand man, Lord Quinoa,” Basil replied. That was the moment when named characters started to die. “It leads to one of the series’ most shocking episodes—”

“No spoilers,” Shellgirl interrupted him.

Plato’s ears rose and he suddenly unsheathed his sword. “Basil—”

“I sense vibrations in the lake, Boss,” Bugsy warned at the same time.

Basil abruptly stopped his car in the middle of the road. The party stepped out of the campervan in good order, although Bugsy struggled to squeeze through the backdoor, and established a defensive position around the vehicle. Basil didn’t need to say anything. After surviving so many fights, the group now acted on pure instinct.

“There.” Bugsy pointed at the left side of the lake with his antennae. Basil summoned his halberd to his hand, Shellgirl readied her cannons, and Rosemarine her handguns. Plato watched their rear for fear of a pincer attack. “It’s coming.”

A form traveled towards the group, hidden under the surface. The water rippled at its approach. The party waited in silence for Basil’s signal to strike, yet he did not move an inch. He instead waited patiently for the challenger to show up.

A reptilian monster with bright blue scales and an elongated neck emerged from the lake to glare at him. Basil briefly mistook it for a snake before noticing a body with four fins underwater. It was neither a fish nor a reptile and roughly three meters long.

Plesiosaurus Level 18 [Aquatic/Reptile]

Basil found the name familiar, though he didn’t remember why. The monster snapped its jaws at the team threateningly, its blue eyes oozing malice. Basil didn’t find it particularly scary.

In fact, the beast looked rather… appetizing.

Basil licked his lips and took a step forward to behead his new meal. The plesiosaur’s bravado immediately faltered and it dived back underwater, never to return.

“Basil, the dinner is swimming away!” Plato complained.

“It won’t get far.” Basil scanned the lake’s shore in search of his missing food. New forms walked among the reeds. “I see movement.”

“The elves?” Shellgirl asked.

“Look, Mister!” Rosemarine pointed at a small beach of bud northeast of their position. “Birds!”

“Where?!” Plato glanced in the right direction and froze at what he saw. “What the—”

Basil choked at the sight. Two monsters had stopped at the lake to drink. The first was a cross between a red reptile and a bat, with large translucent skin wings, a threatening beak, and a strange crest on the back of its head. The other was a bipedal lizard with green feathers on the arms and neck, protruding claws, and a fanged mouth. Basil suddenly remembered where he had seen the word ‘plesiosaur’ and what it meant to him.

Pteranodon Level 15 [Avian/Reptile] Velociraptor Level 12 [Avian/Reptile]

Dinosaurs. The marsh was infested with dinosaur monsters.

“The reptilarium,” Basil realized. The fearsome hunter in him had left, replaced with the naive child obsessed with the first Jurassic Park movie—the others did not exist as far as he was concerned. “The dungeon mutated the reptiles into dinosaur monsters.”

“These chickens are very big,” Bugsy noted upon noticing the velociraptor. Basil’s head snapped in the centimagma’s direction, startling him. “B-Boss? Did I say something wrong?”

“Something wrong?” Basil grabbed Bugsy’s head and locked eyes with this bright, formidable visionary mind. “Bugsy, you are a genius!”

“I-I am?”

“Don’t you see?” Basil released the Bugsy and enlightened him. “Birds descend from dinosaurs! The soul of a tyrannosaurus rex dwells within the heart of every hen!”

“I don’t like your tone,” Plato said ominously. “I don’t like it at all.”

Basil ignored him and thoughtfully watched the velociraptors with his hands behind his back. He cared not if he looked like a supervillain right now. The world would soon understand his bold vision.

“I was thinking too small,” Basil declared. “Vasi suggested that we breed birds with birds. Now I see a bright future beyond time. A future where we shall feast on the eggs of velociraptors and roast young t-rexes on the grill!”

“No!” Plato complained. “Don’t say it! Don’t do it!”

His protests fell on deaf ears, for Basil had already made his choice. The only choice.

“That’s right, Plato.”

Basil grinned at the dinosaurs on the other shore. As they met his gaze, their reptilian eyes suddenly widened in dread and terror.

“We’re going to breed dinosaurs with chickens.”