The Devourer Queen spoke. Logan wasn’t sure what to make of that. Of course, she didn’t say anything useful, in his opinion at least.

“Pretender!”

He wasn’t sure what to make of that, but he didn’t have much time to think about it as she sprung into action, claws and mandibles trying to tear him apart. He did his best to dodge, back and forth, to and fro. She was catching the edges of his carapace, gently pulling and causing him pain, which was new. The queen screamed in his face, the panels where her mouth would be moving to reveal the rows of teeth inside.

The good thing about her keeping so close to him was that he didn’t have many chances to miss shooting with his pistol, and every swing of his mandible blade in his hand caught something. Logan wasn’t sure when it had happened, but he noticed that when he was moving around, if there was an opportunity, the mandible blade that was still in his helmet would slide out and strike at the queen, dealing even more damage against her body.

The valkyrie drone came to play when he ran out of ammo for his pistol, swapping them out and letting go to allow his flying ally the chance to keep an eye on him so he could be revived if he fell in this desperate storm of limbs. A shot every so often reminded him that it was still there, since the clatter of their fight was too loud for the low whine to be heard.

Throughout the fight he could feel the plates on his arms becoming tighter, and he wasn’t sure what to make of that. When it felt like his arms were going to be crushed from the pressure, a yellow light shone from between the seams of the plates, and the next swing of his blade was a blur that he couldn’t see. The pressure was gone, and the room had become silent. The queen stood where she was before, but he had been split diagonally, cleaved apart with precision.

Insectoid Claws (Devourer Variant)

Uncommon

Gauntlets

Armor: 5

Durability: 10/12

Special Effects

Melee Damage: 4-6

Elastic Strike

Build up energy in your arms when you fight in melee. Every 10% mark can be released as a burst of extra damage in a melee attack. Capable of being stored, but can also be manually released.

Looking at the gloves he was wearing, the hidden ability was unlocked, and showed how useful it could be in a fight. He was pretty hurt, sitting around fourteen percent health. He put his blade away and pulled his drone back, making sure that everything was in order.

Looting the new queen gave him more chitin, but no new armor pieces. He found a Dust Pin like Jones did, but the last item on the list caught his eye. He stared at it, hoping that he was reading it correctly, and hoping that if it was, it wouldn’t mean what he was afraid of.

Devourer Queen’s Egg

Legendary

Consumable

Durability 1/1

Special Effects

Unbreakable: Cannot be destroyed.

Use: Can be deleted.

Save us all the trouble and get rid of that thing.

Alternative Use: Can be used by a Devourer to create a new hive.

Or you can do something stupid, I guess.

He couldn’t tear his eyes off of the description, especially the alternative use. The flavor text was a little too sassy for his taste, but based on the history that Meghan told him about the devourers before, he figured it wasn’t out of place. He pulled the item out of his inventory, and was a little surprised at how heavy it was. It was spherical, about the size of a basketball, and weighed around forty kilograms. Covered in more of the chitin that covered the creatures themselves, it had a soft pulsing yellow light from between the plates.

There was a draw to the egg, and he knew he needed to protect it. Logan was a Devourer now, and he could use this to create a new hive. These creatures were feared over the galaxy at one point, and he knew he could use this to bring the other filthy aliens to their knees, to suffer or serve at his whims. He could just see the swarm taking back their world here on Dust Hive, removing the contaminant that was the Free States, and then move further outward, purging the worlds around them as they moved to dominate the sector.

He squeezed his eyes shut and put the egg away. The thrill and draw of the overwhelming power was intoxicating. Logan wasn’t wanting to dominate anything though, and he recognized that something was interfering with his mind. Resolving to keep the egg put away until he needed it, he figured that one thing that new voice had right was that they could be used to remove the Free States militia from the planet, which would hopefully break their stranglehold on the region.

That was something to look forward to later, since Mason may have posted guard outside of the dungeon to keep them inside so they could farm as much gear as possible. Logan walked back into the safe room, noticing that Wendy had already logged off. Alone and in silence, he figured he might as well check out all of the new things he had unlocked by changing his subclass.

The Devourer

A hidden class with very strict requirements, it is designed to emulate the royal classification of the alien species, allowing the user a level of control over the lower castes. Primarily a frontline defender and damage dealer, they are able to work in tandem with others in a coordinated fashion. Passive abilities tend to boost movement speed and melee damage.

That helped to explain a bit more about the synergy between his armor and new class, they allowed him the chance to slice the queen almost in half. He saw that the two main ability choices of the class allowed him to Command Workers or to Command Warriors. He wasn’t sure why he would want workers over the warriors if it was in combat, but he figured he would look further into that when he was done looking at everything else.

Insectoid Greaves gave him the hidden ability similar to the claws, allowing him to build a charge for moving, and releasing that charge to essentially teleport to a nearby location. He couldn’t teleport through materials, so it was line of sight based, and it was roughly one meter per two percent charge, allowing him to move fifty meters almost instantly.

The Carapace he wore gave him the hidden ability to explosively release ichor in a sphere around him, causing anyone or anything hit by it to be slowed down by the sticky mess. It was slightly caustic, so it would deal some acid damage, but it wasn’t enough to kill anything except the smallest of beasts. It wouldn’t work on him or his allies, since the game world knew how to mark friendly combatants.

The Hive’s Mind helmet brought with it the Shout of Subservience, which gave him a single chance to cause all opponents within twenty meters to become stunned and fall to one knee for thirty seconds. It had a cooldown of thirty minutes, however, so it wasn’t something he could use over and over again. It did specify that it didn’t work on monsters that had been tagged as boss monsters, so the queen in the next room would be immune.

It had been a while since he checked his character sheet, so he pulled it up, wanting to distribute the unspent points he still had.

Name: Logan

Level: 13

Class: The Engineer

Subclass: The Devourer (P)

Species: #UmaN

Strength: 12 Health: 340/340 Health Regen: 1 /sec Vitality: 10 Armor: 24 Dexterity: 13 Stamina: 290/290 Stamina Regen: 1.6 /sec Agility: 16 Endurance: 1 Intellect: 11 Psi Focus: 210/210 Psi Focus Regen: 1 /sec Willpower: 10 Shield: 0

Attribute Points to distribute: 21

Talent points to distribue: 7

He liked that his strength went up by itself, most likely as a result of fighting on the front lines, like exercising. He didn’t like that his species was a little messed up, but he would look into that later. Since it was more important for him to survive with his drone, ensuring that the others stayed in the fight as well, he figured he could put some points into vitality finally. His new abilities relied on him being close to the fight, and since he wouldn’t have Tony nearby forever, melee fighting might not be a bad place to specialize. Logan didn’t necessarily want to, but it was the best choice for the team as it was.

With a new strength score of 22 and his vitality up to 21, his overall health pool had bloomed, giving him a much easier time in combat. A grand total of 550 health would make sure that he could hold his own against almost anything. Except maybe a fully spinning minigun pointed center mass at him from three meters.

Logan opted to put three of his talent points into his drone, giving a second one to use, allowing him to have one out at almost all times in combat. He also increased the durability and duration, so they could take more hits and help for longer. Thankfully, the cooldown wasn’t tied directly to the duration, so it only took two minutes to recharge, but they would continue to fly for two minutes and twenty seconds, allowing for some overlap between them.

He was starting to feel like a weird hybrid of battlefield medic and frontline tank, taking hits, fighting in melee, but also being responsible for keeping people in the fight for as long as he could. It wasn’t the role he envisioned for himself, but sometimes things didn’t work the way you wanted, he figured.

He had four more talent points left, and he didn’t see too much between the two devourer abilities. He chose Summon Warriors for now, and while most of the places he could put his points were the same, there was an icon that looked like a double helix. He pressed the icon, and a large complex web dominated his entire view. A galaxy of lights and colors appeared before him, but most of them were dull or far away, only the center was glowing brightly and when he focused on it the tooltip told him that it was the core gene line for the Devourer Warrior.

There was too much information flowing on that screen that he couldn’t fully access, most only giving him hints on how to unlock them, so he opted to move away from it for now. He chose to increase the damage of his warriors twice, and why not also have the option to have two of them. There wasn’t really a duration attribute he could put points into, so that was strange, but hey, free damage.

Logan looked into his inventory to see what he might have missed, and he saw the Dust Pin sitting there. He pulled it out, and saw a weathered pin about an inch in width that had the Dust Haven emblem. This was different from the Free States, because the Free States was a guild created by players that had taken over the entire city that was based on the planet. Dust Haven was a wonderful city at one point, before the players showed up and initiated a hostile takeover.

The pin provided a small bonus to armor and experience while on the planet, and it was uncommon in rarity. It was a good enough item that he placed it on the left side of his chest, and it adhered there. If he was going to be stuck here for a little while, he might as well make the most of it. He sat back in the small rest space, letting the light from the small lamp wash over him while he thought about his next steps.

His friends all basically said that they were going to take a few real days off, which meant around two weeks if he stayed in here. Prestige and the system admin didn’t want him to change games, so he was going to stay here. He might as well help his friends by collecting the pieces of gear they were here for, maybe giving Mason enough to let them out.

—

It was a real day later when Logan walked back out from the dungeon, being greeted by two riot soldiers at the entrance. They shifted their shields and weapons to point to him, trying to threaten him to not come any farther. He pulled out piece after piece of gear, just dropping them on the ground in front of him, staring at one of the guards with his six yellow eyes as he did so. Helmet, suit, gloves, boot, again and again, he kept pulling them out and dropping them down.

The guards started to get uncomfortable, the only sound being the solid “whump” of the chitin armor hitting the dusty ground at their feet. After fifteen minutes, he had placed almost one hundred sets on the ground, silently walking back inside the dungeon.

The left guard, the one who was being stared at, looked to his friend. “Hey… that was super creepy. You should call Mason, and have him send someone to collect all of this.” He looked down in disbelief at the pile of gear beneath him. “Maybe we should also recommend that he let them go, cuz that guy gives me the creeps.” The other guard nodded and walked off to the main building in the base.

He had fought devourers before, and he knew what it felt like to get torn apart by them. Who in their right mind would stay inside a place full of that nightmare fuel?