Kezo was a careening big rig swathed in swirling black flames that swallowed what meager light coated the tunnels. Pedal-to-the-metal, he barreled through the Blighted, leaving showers of Essence and Gli in his wake. With around twenty levels over our enemies and decked out with the strongest gear Artas could buy, he didn’t slow down despite throngs of monsters in his path. He had gone far ahead, and we could no longer see him.

Megan, Nitana, and I had nothing to do except follow the scorched marks on the tunnel’s craggy walls. I galloped much faster with the passive of [Horde Stampede] at max, but I didn’t move on to find Kezo because Megan and Nitana were lagging.

“Wow, Kezo’s so far away!” Megan said. “Herald, do that thing again.”

“What thing?” I slowed my pace to fall in line with her and Nitana. “My Horde Stampede skill?”

“Nah, just let Kezo kill everything,” Nitana said. “We’ll just meet up with him when he’s done. Some rest and relaxation to continue our vacation.”

“I feel bad not contributing anything,” Megan said.

Nitana dismissively waved her weapon. “He won’t mind.”

“And, uh…” Megan peered at me with a sheepish grin on her face. “It’s kinda fun running with those effects.”

A kindred spirit! “Right?” I said. “Probably my most worth-it purchase.” I cast [Horde Stampede]. A chorus of hooves pounding the ground layered ours as waves of dust cascaded through our legs. The blurred walls we passed became even mushier as we sped through the passageway.

As [Horde Stampede] expired and the sound effects quieted down, we heard a voice calling for us.

“Is that Kezo?” Megan asked.

He came running toward us from the tunnel’s far end, shouting something we couldn’t make out. A monster was chasing him. We buffed up, preparing for a challenging battle.

“Look at this!” he called out. He had sheathed his swords and wasn’t covered with black flames. He pointed at the creature following him. “You won’t believe what I found!”

Nitana lowered her staff, the blazing mini-sun at its tip deflating. “Eh? Why doesn’t he kill that thing?”

Kezo stopped in front of us, a huge grin on his face, his eyes wide with excitement. “I met this in one of the caverns over there. Almost killed it along with the rest. Thankfully, I noticed what it was.”

Behind him were a floating helmet, chest plate, and rusted steel gloves covered with clumps of glowing snow, a few icicles here and there. The one possessing the armor, a blue-green specter phasing in and out of view, seemed to be the spirit of a Frost Imp—a [Lvl 51 Blighted Glacial Haunt].

“It’s dripping goo,” Megan observed. “I didn’t know the Blight can infect ghosts.”

“Is that what you wanted to show us?” Nitana folded her arms. “Pretty cool, I guess?”

“Another monster you haven’t seen before?” I surmised.

“Yes, but I’ve heard of it many times,” Kezo said. “There’s this Pathfinder NPC named Gorenall. You’d encounter him at level fifty, and he doles out quests to hunt monsters around that level. Every few days, he cycles through a list of monsters. Sometimes he says he badly wants to see flying armor, some story he heard from his father.”

“You think this infected ghost is the answer?” Megan pointed at the Glacial Haunt scratching Kezo’s butt with its sharp claws whenever it solidified.

“Definitely flying armor,” Nitana said.

“We’ve found all the other monsters Gorenall’s looking for except that one,” Kezo said.

“Maybe someone did,” I said, “and they just don’t want to admit it.

“Anyway, I don’t think the Expeditionary Legion knows, or SpartanDonkey would be eagerly selling that info,” continued Kezo. “The community’s consensus is that the flying armor monster is in an area blocked off during the Great Quake, probably on the way to finding the other Mardukryon tribes.”

“It’s not blocked off since Bawu managed to capture one for her experiments.”

“That’s gotta be a scary place,” Megan said, hugging herself and pretending to shiver.

“I’d like to see ghosts,” Nitana said. “They’re cooler than zombies.”

“Turns out you didn’t need to apologize for anything.” I gave Kezo a thumbs up—the gesture he loved so much.

He raised a brow. “What do you mean?”

“You said sorry for pulling the average level of the party up. But we wouldn’t have met this ice ghost and those lizard people if you weren't here to balance my low level. Otherwise, we’d encounter monsters in the thirties.”

“True, but you might still find new monsters among them.”

“Don’t think we’d notice,” Nitana said. “We don’t know enough about monsters to know which is new.”

“Me too,” I said. “I might’ve already encountered a Blighted version of a still undiscovered monster while doing this quest on my own, and I just didn’t know.” I was getting hard with excitement at the potential treasure trove of information Bawu could be.

I bet Bawu’s chimera pets found ways to previously impassable areas. She mentioned she created them for retrieval operations, tunneling through the earth to recover Arcane Brewer stuff from her Lodge that collapsed during the Great Quake. She did succeed in reconstituting records of the Arcane Brewer’s wealth of knowledge; she also built extensive laboratories from the machines she found.

The Arcane Brewer Lodge should be near or connected to the ancient Mardukryon settlements. If Bawu managed to reach the Arcane Brewer Lodge, it wouldn’t be farfetched to assume that she could also get to other places.

Such an obvious clue that I missed! No one should know about Herald Stone’s lapse.

This neatly flowed to Pathfinder Gibil’s stories about the Hermit Crabores scavenging items that were possible clues to other surviving tribes. Need some tunneling? Bawu had the manpower, monster power, and explosives to do it.

“Let’s return to our cleaning job,” Kezo said. “The tunnel branches into several caves. We can split up to take care of each of them. Megan, Nitana, and me. Herald, you can go with one of us.”

“I’ll try to explore on my own,” I said. “I won’t die, I promise. Just going to soften up the monsters.”

An army of Blighted Saurians shrieked as they attacked me, hurling spears and shooting arrows. I drank [Sour Litchi Juice] and cast [Horde Stampede] whenever it was off cooldown, employing my ginormous-brained strategy of running as fast as possible before the attacks hit.

The spears were slow and easy to avoid; the fast arrows were the problem. A few times, they successfully landed their shots. They were nearly level fifty, and I was eighteen—one hit could halve my health even with max [Ancestral Constitution] stacks and [Greater Pyro Shell] on. I had to ensure I was back to full health with my shell on before my next mistake. Two hits in a row would kill me.

The Saurians never seemed to run out of projectiles. Though it worked to my advantage that they stuck with ranged attacks. With some expert herding, aided by my Totems and made easier by increased movement speed, I managed to bunch up the Saurian Hoplite and Saurian Archers in the middle of the cavern. I was like a border collie gathering sheep.

I circled the lizard herd, careful not to stray too near, or they’d switch to melee strikes. Not too far either, or they’d break formation to chase me. The Blighted Saurians stayed in their spot while attacking—oh yeah, they were standing on poison clouds.

Second after second, their health went down from both the Blight and poison. It was difficult to avoid their projectiles being this close to them. Good thing these guys were dumb, aiming at my position, not where I was heading.

“Herald? Where are you?” Megan came galloping into the cavern. “Oh! So many! Let me—”

“Don’t! They’ll die soon,” I said. “Just wait—Woah!” An arrow hit me while I was distracted. I sped up as more spears and arrows peppered the ground I had stepped on. A few more seconds later and the Saurians died.

[ Increased: Healing Touch Level to 4 ]

Lvl. 4 Healing Touch: Use a touch of your revitalizing Ancestral Flames to heal yourself or an ally for (400 + (Vigor x 3.5) + 6% Ancestral Shroud) Health Points, and grant the target a buff that heals over time by the same value over 10 seconds. (Heal buff does not stack for a target.)

Generate for target: 1 Rejuvenation Charge

Cost: 35 Ancestral Shroud

Cooldown: 3 Seconds

“Heal growing stronger.” I nodded at the floating description of [Healing Touch]. It could restore more than a third of my fully self-buffed health pool in one go, which wasn’t counting the Heal over Time effect. A tanky healer was one of the most annoying builds to kill in any MMORPG, especially if they had an answer to crowd-control spells.

“That’s so awesome!” Megan said, clapping her hands as everyone should in this situation. “You’re like way below the level of those lizard guys, yet you managed to kill a whole bunch of them.”

“They were already killing themselves anyway,” I modestly said. “You guys done with the rest of the Blighted here?”

“Oopsies, I forgot what I came here to say. Kezo found a huge Blighted monster. Probably a boss dropping that whatchamacallit?”

“Fulguris Extract. I need four more of those. Let’s go kill it.”

Nitana sat outside a row of cave mouths, illuminated by her staff floating beside her and a screen in front of her face.

There were five openings, each indistinguishable from the others, except the last, which had a rave party. A neon green radiance spilled out, punctuated by red, blue, and occasional darkness. It had explosions and roars for music. Are raves still a thing nowadays?

“What took you guys so long?” Nitana asked, hastily closing the screen so we wouldn’t see what she was watching.

“Sorry! I got lost trying to find Herald,” Megan said.

“And I was busy killing some monsters.” I looked around. “Where’s Kezo? He’s inside?”

“He went ahead to solo the boss.” Nitana snorted. “Something about testing out how strong he’s gotten. A guy thing, probably.”

“Didn’t you also want to test—?” Megan began to say.

“Shhh!” Nitana hissed at her friend. Then she turned to look behind her, hearing hurried hoofsteps.

Kezo was running to the cave just as a waterfall of sludge showered him. He dove out, covered with goo, no doubt inflicted with a bunch of negative statuses. “Don’t worry, team. The Blighted boss won’t come out of the cave. I’ve tested it.”

“Ewww,” Megan said, stepping away from grimy Kezo. “That reeks. I should turn off my smell settings forever.”

“The boss inside is level sixty-three,” Kezo said. “Higher than even Zoar-Elab’s final phase. But no need to worry. It’s just a boss inside Herald’s quest, so it’s weaker than those out in the open. And our problem with the Living Statue was party composition, not strength per se. We can easily take on this slimy guy. Follow me. I’ll explain its mechanics inside.”

“Slimy guy?” Megan made a face. “Okay, this is a really gross quest.”

“I promise, this will just be until the morrow,” I said, winking at her.

“That means tomorrow.”