“Here.”

I handed Jun a strange rectangle that had once been her ammo belt. My core had corrupted it into something highly useful, but without any of the stats she benefited so heavily from. Just like everything else I created.

//AD-INFINITUM(//CORRUPTED, Professional)

Core mastery required: 27

Current item mastery: 1.

Current slots: 3.

//REITERATE: Any projectile placed within this item’s slots will be stored. Expend 30 battery to create a perfect copy of the projectile. Projectiles created this way have (25+(25% Mastery))= 25.25% increased effectiveness and cannot be traded, sold, or used as material.

Upgrades at mastery [1/55/78/95/???]

“Thanks. Does it do what I wanted it to do?” Jun accepted the rectangle with a nod and a question.

I nodded; It did exactly what she wanted, but it wasn’t cheap. Both in battery cost to use and in potential to make. The only reason I had enough was that the mercenary we’d almost killed counted as an enemy defeated, so //CREATION had made me a copy of their core. I’d tried to do the same thing I’d done with Nia’s core to this one, but a litany of errors had stopped me in my tracks.

I could only remove functions from the real core; not a copy. What I’d held was an empty husk filled with nodes; perfect for gaining potential and getting a little stronger, but if I actually wanted something new, I’d have to be a little more destructive in my approach. Now, what I did have was enough crystallized experience to finally find out something I’d been wondering about.

“I’m going to try it.” I told Jun as I removed all the crystallized experience I’d stored in my inventory. It’d cost me a handful of core mastery levels, but those only really mattered if I found or corrupted something high-level.

Jun slotted the two special bullets she had into //AD-INFINITUM before giving me a hug. She took a step back and nodded, her arms crossed as she watched in interest.

//ENDLESS was my lowest-quality, and by extension, lowest cost to level up corrupted item. It was three levels away from its final listed upgrade, but I really wanted to know what that ??? at the end of all my corrupted items meant. Was it a placeholder for level 100? A hidden variable that’d only reveal itself when I did something specific? Or did it mean I had to corrupt the item further?

The curiosity had gotten so much worse now that I didn’t have to worry about helping Mortician and clearing a hazard. Now I was going to dismiss one of those possibilities; I had just enough crystallized experience to push //ENDLESS all the way up to level 100. Luckily item mastery didn’t seem to follow the extreme curve that core mastery did, which was probably to dissuade people from picking up every piece of gear that was a higher level than their own, and create a choice to go with a piece that was stronger at the moment, but would be weaker in the long run.

I opened my interface and swiped over to my equipment screen, opened the description for //ENDLESS, and made a connection between it and the crystallized experience in my hands.

//WARNING; //ENDLESS WILL CONSUME ALL EXPERIENCE DESIGNATED TOWARDS IT.

//IT MAY BE PRUDENT TO SPREAD THAT EXPERIENCE AMONG ITEMS FOR GREATER EFFECT.

//CONTINUE ANYWAY: [Y] OR [N]?

It was the wrong choice. I knew that. But I just had to know. The rational part of my mind told me to just give it three levels and see what the item mastery 25 upgrade was for it, but the irrational part was just plain excited to see what the hell was about to happen. I shoved the experience forwards as I pressed [Y].

//ENDLESS HAS GAINED (3) LEVELS.

//ENDLESS HAS REACHED ITS FULL POTENTIAL.

//ENDLESS HAS GAINED (75) LEVELS.

//ENDLESS//ENDLESS//ENDLESS//ENDLESS//ENDLESS//ENDLESS

//ERROR. MAXIMUM LEVEL ACHIEVED.

//SEE ITEM FOR ERROR DETAILS.

That was new. “Looks like it did something, but I don’t know what.”

“Errors?” Jun guessed.

“Errors.” I confirmed. I looked over at my shoulder, but it didn’t look like //ENDLESS had changed at all. “Watch my shoulder for me. Just in case it does something weird while I’m looking at the item screen.”

“Will do.” Jun nodded.

I swiped back over to //ENDLESS, which now had a streak of blue slashed across it. Like it had been crossed out of a list. I pressed and held on it, and for the first time, I was greeted with a loading screen. A small circle of ribbons danced around each other, obscuring my vision until a bar completely filled on the bottom of my interface and I was greeted with //ENDLESS’ new stats.

//ENDLESS(//CORRUPTED,Crafted)

Core Mastery Requirement: 3

Current item mastery: 100

Ribbons in use: 3/4

Use a consumable on a ribbon to paint it in the colours of said consumable. Consume a ribbon to gain the effects of the consumable.

Ribbon recharge rate is based on the strength of the consumable it is dyed with.

Ribbon consumables have (25+Mastery)=125% increased strength.

Mastery 5: Increases ribbon recharge rate by [10+((Available Ribbons)*15)]%. Currently=55%.

Mastery 15: Grants one additional ribbon and the ability to remove consumables from ribbons. Warning: doing so destroys the consumable in an utterly non-recoverable way.

Mastery 25: While under the effects of at least one ribbon, all experience gained is increased by (Mastery/2)=50%.

//ERROR: ITEM MASTERY CAP REACHED.

//ERROR: FURTHER UPGRADES AVAILABLE.

//FINAL UPGRADE AVAILABLE WHEN ALL RIBBONS ARE PAINTED IN (MYTHICAL) OR GREATER GRADE CONSUMABLES.

I stared at //ENDLESS’ new effect with a small frown. The increased experience would be great in the long run, and would probably end up refunding itself far sooner than I expected, but it didn’t seem like that great of a final upgrade. //ENDLESS itself made the consumables put into it more than twice as strong as their originals, so I’d kind of expected something along those lines for a final upgrade.

Actually, scratch that. I still had one upgrade to go. All I needed were four mythical grade consumables. Things that I’d literally never seen, and that would probably be strong enough on their own to push someone into a whole other tier of strength.

“Well, looks like I’m not upgrading that again for a long time.” I chuckled, closing my interface and shooting a glance at Jun.

She shook her head. “I didn’t see any changes.”

Damn. “Well, I guess I should’ve expected that. I did get a pretty strong experience boosting effect, so it’s not all that bad.”

“Hey. Focus.” Ambus finally cut in. She tapped the roof under her feet, then gestured at the barracks a good quarter-mile away. “We go in twenty minutes. Are you really ready?”

The last two days had gone by extremely quickly. A constant intrusion of soldiers and mercenaries forced us out of Okeria’s underground cavern, but it turned out that he had a whole network of safe houses through the city. One of which we stood on top of at this particular moment, watching the guard prepare themselves for the exercises that Thorn would be intruding on in an hour or so.

“We’re ready.” Jun insisted. “You know how strong we are. And you know how strong Scalovera’s mercenaries are. Nobody’s going to stop us, even if we get caught.”

“It’s not us I’m worried about.” Ambus muttered. “It’s the other two. They aren’t strong. And not like Okeria isn’t strong; they’ve never fought a day in their lives. If we get caught, they’re the ones Scalovera will target. They’re the ones he’s going to kill. I can’t… I won’t let that happen.”

Jun and I shared a look. “So why didn’t you tell us this before?” I pointedly asked. “We’d take this a lot more seriously if we knew who we were going for.”

Ambus seemed… surprised by that somehow. “I… I thought that you would be less serious. Because we aren’t rescuing anyone who would further our fighting strength.”

“That’s what Thorn’s doing right now.” I pointed out. “When you include us three, Okeria, and Gloriosa, I think we’ve got a fairly powerful army brewing. Even Mortician’s getting a lot stronger from sparring with Thorn, so that’s another person we can count on. Tell us the truth. Who’re we actually rescuing?”

“They’re… special to Gloriosa and me.” Ambus admitted shyly. “My boyfriend and her wife. Scalovera captured them to make sure we didn’t do anything, but he couldn’t hold them publicly in jail without all the citizens asking too many questions. So he holed them up in the barracks.”

“Just tell us that from the start. If someone took Seb from me, I know I’d go after them.” Jun knelt down next to Ambus and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Trust us. We can’t tell you exactly why we’re here, but we want Okeria back in power just as much as you do. And that means getting all his networks back up and running at full strength.”

“Which you can’t do if you’re worried about your loved ones.” I added, crouching down on Ambus’ other side. “How many more civilians is Scalovera keeping hostage?”

Ambus sighed heavily and let her shoulders drop. The motion carried both relief and uncertainty, which I could sympathize with all too well. “We don’t know. From Thorn, Okeria, Gloriosa and I, it seems like only these two. But we don’t know if all the others who are being held have their own loved ones being held hostage. We could save one and end up with another half-dozen hostages we have to worry about.”

Boots against stone cut the conversation short. We went completely quiet as we watched the guards file out of the barracks, a constant stream of armor all painted the same cream colour with accents of all different colours. They were led by a single figure in imposing purple armor that was twice as large as any of the other guards’, whose feet cracked the stone wherever he stepped and who belted out a constant stream of obscenities that would’ve made a sailor flinch. But not Staura obscenities, like ‘drowned’ or ‘abyssal’.

No, these were English obscenities. Racist, homophobic, and bigoted obscenities that I’d only heard a handful of times in my entire life. I didn’t recognize the armor, nor the voice, but something about the confidence they carried…

“They know.” I muttered, watching the chosen continue to spew hate while the Staura behind them were completely unaware of what they were saying. “They remember.”