Mortician and Thorn’s grunts of effort provided a strange background noise to my decision. Okeria didn’t seem to think that highly of Scalovera’s people, but I couldn’t risk our safety on a preconception.

Jun beat me to the question. “Do you actually know how strong Scalovera’s people are?”

Ambus nodded. “We don’t have their exact stats, but I’ve been observing the soldiers as they go about their daily routine. Their strongest I would compare to a hazard twelve slyk, and their weakest could be comparable to a hazard eight. I don’t have as accurate readings on Scalovera’s inner circle, but from the research I’ve done, they don’t have any great accomplishments to their names.”

“So they’re weaker than the hazard we just fought through, and then there’s a bunch of unknowns. What’s the chance that Scalovera hired a bunch of thugs to protect him?” Jun continued. She leaned down over the map and tapped on a circle halfway across the city from the barracks. “And Scalovera; is he a fighter, or just a politician? Is there a chance that he’d come himself if someone raised the alarm on us?”

“No chance in the abyss.” Okeria said with absolute confidence. “Scalovera’s not weak, but he’s not strong. What he is is a coward, and if there’s any chance he’d get hurt or killed by going into a fight, he ain’t going.”

A coward. That meant we had a coin flip between him sending his entire entourage after us just to make sure we didn’t make it out alive and sending the absolute least he needed to so he could keep himself safely surrounded. I’d known plenty of cowards in my life, and I’d even managed to work with a few, but they were frustrating and strangely unpredictable.

“So whatever Scalovera thinks will keep him safe and in power is what he’ll do.” I assumed, and received nods from everyone else in return. Even Jun. “Okay, that’s good to know. How many of his goons should we expect to see at the barracks?”

Gloriosa shrugged helplessly. “We can’t say. His people haven’t taken up roles just yet; they’re ruling Rainbow Basin as one big mass. So it completely depends on what his people want to do that day.”

“We’re preparing for the worst option.” Ambus clarified. “Which would be if Scalovera himself is not there, and a large section of his inner circle is. We won’t be going in blind, of course; if the rescue mission would be too much of a risk, we will wait until there is an opening or delay it by a few days. If Thorn is successful, we might not even have to wait for an opening; the guard could make it for us.”

A lot of ‘ifs’ there, but they seemed to be calculated risks at worst. I couldn’t really complain about the plan, and it would get us one step closer to taking back Rainbow Basin. As long as we had all the right supplies, I didn’t think we’d be in trouble.

“I’m in.” I decided with a nod.

Jun mirrored my gesture and sentiment. “Me too. As long as I get a few new pieces of gear beforehand.”

“New weapons is all I can really offer, and a few materials for Seb’s core. Anything else ain’t strong enough ta last ya a month with the rate you’re growing.” Okeria said thoughtfully, swiping his hand through the air and summoning one of his floating metal gun barrels. “What’s your core mastery level, Juniper?”

“Thirty-five.” Jun replied instantly. “But I haven’t grown a single level since we left the hazard. Is the experience gap from level to level really that high?”

“Oh, yeah.” Okeria nodded vigorously. “I’m sure Sebastian’s told ya all about it, but there’s some algorithm behind how much experience ya need ta level up each time. It’s something like… however much it took ya ta level up last time multiplied by a tenth of your current level, with a minimum of one. So someone going from level ninety-nine ta one-hundred would be ten times as much experience needed.”

“It’s also why the first ten levels are so much easier than the others.” Gloriosa added. “Because they all cost the same amount of experience. But just going from thirty to thirty-one is three times more than twenty-nine to thirty. There’s a reason most people get stuck in the low forties.”

My experiences in my old life confirmed that to be true. And getting my hazard tolerance up was even harder. I tilted my head to the side as Okeria fiddled with his barrel, pressing his fingers along it and caressing it like a lover. The metal flowed like water under his touch, large swaths of it falling away and disappearing before it touched the ground. It slimmed down over the course of a few seconds, now taking on a shape that was close-ish to that of a revolver. He scraped away some of the excess metal after a look at Jun’s hand, cut out a space for the cylinder, and nodded to himself.

Okeria flipped the weapon so he was holding the square barrel and offered it to Jun. “Alright; that’s one simple handgun for ya.” He said, a small twinge of pride in his voice. “It don’t have a level yet, but it won’t have ta for long. Sebastian’ll take care of that for ya.”

Jun accepted the weapon and slid out the cylinder, staring at a solid piece of metal that wouldn’t be housing much of anything. “You forgot to make the bullet holes. And the barrel’s one solid piece of metal.”

“Like I said, it don’t have a level yet. Oh, and I forgot ta do this too; I give possession of this particular piece of metal ta Juniper Persephonia.” Okeria said simply, but the world responded differently. Reality around the almost-gun turned blurry for a split second, then shattered into a thousand clear shards and clattered to the ground. Nothing looked like it had changed, but the silvery metal had a slightly yellow tint to it now instead of Okeria’s blue. “There. Now it’s yours ta do whatever ya want with it.”

This time, when Jun looked down at the gun, it had holes. Four massive ones in the cylinder, along with a handful of smaller ones between each of them. The barrel itself had changed as well, going from a solid piece to something with what looked like a camera’s aperture on the end of it. Jun made a noise of interest and ran her thumb down along the barrel, the aperture responding by expanding until the barrel’s hole was the perfect size for the cylinder’s larger indents.

“Depending on which kind of bullets ya want ta fire, ya can change the barrel’s size ta fit ‘em.” Okeria explained, leaning over Jun and pressing the cylinder back into the gun. “It’ll only fire the properly sized bullets, so ya can kill little things and big things with one weapon. Hopefully that’ll carry over when Sebastian does his thing.”

“His thing?” Gloriosa asked with curiosity.

Ambus nodded in agreement. “What Gloriosa asked. You still haven’t told us what any of their cores are capable of.”

Okeria actually managed to keep his mouth shut? I shook my head and laughed; that was a miracle.

“I can make things into other things.” I gave an overly vague explanation on purpose, but Okeria’s two friends nodded as if I’d given an entire speech. “Should I use any other materials?”

“No clue. I’ve never done anything like this with my metal.” Okeria shrugged. “I’ll make some special gunpowder and make a bullet for Juniper so ya can ‘change’ it too. Tell me if it costs too much and I’ll dip into our core stash for ya.”

“Thanks.” I said to both Okeria and Jun as she handed me her new gun. “I’ll see what I can do.”

I opened my interface and swiped over to my core, pressing Jun’s gun to the vortex as I activated //CREATION. The numbers that popped up before me were huge, as I’d expected, but there was something new there. The gun was ready for corruption, and right next to its cost, there was a slot for a material that’d get specifically put into its grip. That hadn’t happened for anything else I’d made.

“It’s different for some reason.” I informed Okeria, who stopped fiddling with what I could imagine was a bullet to look over at me. “It wants something for the grip.”

“Huh. Really? Alright, lemme see what I’ve got in here.” Okeria said aloud, swiping his hand through empty air as he consulted his interface.

“Okeria’s actually sharing? My goodness, the world really is ending.” Ambus chuckled, to which Gloriosa shook her head and laughed along.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. I owe Sebastian a whole lot, so this is just repayment.” Okeria muttered, summoning pieces of differently coloured things to his hand. He shook his head at every one until he settled on a chunk of black glass. “This’ll do. It matches Juniper’s armor, too, so that’s a plus.”

I accepted the glass with a nod, then identified it.

//Living Furnace Glass- Black.

//A chunk of glass scraped from the innards of a living furnace. The darker the colour, the rarer the glass.

//Scarce,Unknown.

“Thanks, Okeria.” I said as I shoved the glass into my interface. The additional popup disappeared to show the newly adjusted potential cost, and it was a lot more than I’d expected. Still just barely within my budget, though, as I’d fully consumed all the cores I’d gotten from the dredged switchport.

I pressed confirm and watched as the vortex consumed Jun’s gun, my potential counting down until my core informed me that the weapon had been //CORRUPTED. I reached into the vortex and pulled out a gun that barely looked any different than the one that had gone in, save for a black glass handle that sent tendrils through the metal.

//CACOPHONY(//CORRUPTED,Masterpiece): Core mastery requirement: 33.

Current item mastery: 0.

Designated Ammunition: N/A.

//SHATTERING-WAIL: This weapon can store two different types of ammunition in its cylinders, one small and one large. The following two effects are applied based on which type is currently designated for firing, and does not override whatever effects the ammunition itself has.

//WAIL: Smaller ammunition fired from this weapon leaves behind a Crack. Cracks decrease the afflicted enemy’s health by 1%, stacking up to 8 times.

//SHATTER: Larger ammunition fired from this weapon shatters any Cracks the enemy has, causing the shot to deal 8% increased damage per Crack.

Upgrades at item mastery [8/28/48/88/???]

Yet another thing that would work wonderfully with Jun’s core. I almost handed it off to her before I noticed that the //WAIL portion of the gun didn’t just decrease one stat; it decreased the enemy’s health. I’d quite literally never seen anything like that in either of my lives.

“Okeria, how rare is it for something to change someone’s health stat?” I slowly asked.

Okeria shook his head. “‘Rare’ is the wrong word ta use there. It don’t exist. Why? That gun shoot health-giving bullets or something?”

“No, the exact opposite.” I mused, imagining how deadly this thing would be if it was used against someone with a high health stat. Especially in Jun’s hands. A hundred health would go down to eighty-two after nine shots, which equaled a loss of twenty-eight percent stat efficiency. And this was on a completely unleveled weapon.

I flipped the gun around in my hand and offered it to Jun. “That thing’s going to be a monster when you level it up.”