As Tori and I walked west into Andersonville, I started laying out exactly what I knew.

  “So, the first thing is, the Consortium’s using Charge to power their dungeons. We got proof of that in the Whole New World dungeon,” I said. The mech was safely tucked away in my inventory so we could have an actual conversation, and right now, my only weapon was the Voltsmith’s Grasp. If something attacked us, Tori was our main fighter. I wasn’t helpless, though; the Grasp was a powerful weapon by itself.

  “Right, I remember that from the dungeon you killed,” she said, nodding thoughtfully.

  “Yeah. The Whole New World dungeon. You weren’t there for the exhibit, but it explained a lot of the theory behind the System, with a serious bias. Basically, the Consortium’s operating with a limited amount of power, or something, so their system can only do so many things. They’re picking the stuff we’re up against, and the stuff we’re getting to survive, deliberately. The claimed objective is to bring us up to their level, but that’s not squaring with what’s happening on Earth. This doesn’t feel benevolent.” I clenched my metal fingers into a fist. Charge formed around it in a slight resonant field.

  Tori kept walking, eyes swiveling as we entered Andersonville.

  I followed behind her, still talking. “Then there’s what I learned underneath the Whole New World.”

  “Charge is souls, right?”

  I shook my head. “It’s not souls or spirits—or at least, I don’t think it is. But Charge does have something to do with people. When I overloaded Taven Liu’s system, it burned him out, not just his connection to it.”

  “That was kind of gross, by the way.”

  “That feels like confirmation that Charge is…”

  “Mana? Soul Energy? Attunement? The Force?” Tori looked over her shoulder and winked. “I mean, pick a power system from a movie or game, and Charge could probably slot in for it, based on what you’re saying. Force is probably the closest one, though.”

  “Alright. Sure. So, Charge is everywhere, in everything. Or at least it is now,” I said. “But I need to get to the source of Charge to understand it. It might be everywhere, but it wasn’t always. Until the Tutorial—or maybe even Phase One—there wasn’t Charge on Earth.”

  “Yeah. It’s kind of a ‘dark energy’ thing. There, but not detectable or usable. Physics people were always going on about dark matter or dark energy or whatever on the internet, but it always seemed like a waste of time. What’s the point of studying an energy form that we can’t see, can’t use, and can’t even detect?”

  “Uh, right.”

  We kept talking about physics, video games, movies, and Charge as we picked our way through Andersonville. I had the urge to find Mrs. Faren’s house, but I pushed it down. We weren’t on the same kind of time crunch we’d been working with last phase, but the pressure was still very much there. The fog wall delineating Andersonville’s main street and dungeon hung in the air in front of us, visible even a few blocks away from it, the outlines of the main drag faintly visible through it. Unlike last time, the Norse Street dungeon wasn’t going multicolored.

  “Ready?” I asked as I pulled the mech from my inventory.

  “For this? Always. Let’s cut through here, kill the first boss, and then ring the Rat’s Nest’s doorbell,” Tori said. She stepped through the fog wall, and I followed her.

  Tier Two Dungeon: Norse Street (Floor One)

  Objective: Defeat the Warband

  Objective: Survive (0/1)

  Completion: 0%

  Guarded Entrance: You cannot leave this dungeon until this floor is completed.

  Blood Sport: The announcers aren’t on your side, but may provide useful hints.

  “Norse Street’s next set of challengers is a crowd favorite!” the announcer yelled. “The Raided City’s been sacked so many times, though; will Tori Vanderbilt and Hal Riley manage to find anything of value in this final invasion?”

  The dungeon had seen better days.

  The wooden palisades were charred, and in some places, they’d fallen over into jumbled piles of logs that looked like a child’s pick-up sticks game. Half of the torches were out, and unlike the fresh-cut pine smell of our first clear, it reeked of smoke and blood.

  We settled in and got to work, and for the next half-hour, it was nothing but carnage. I didn’t even pull the trigger on my mecha’s rail gun or grenade launcher. The Level Thirty Wolf Raiders and similar monsters weren’t a threat, and the machine’s sledgehammer-like fists were more than enough.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “The attackers have reached the shipyard!”

  “They’re approaching the Warband!”

  “Oooh, that looked like it hurt!”

  There was no useful information; we weren’t giving the announcers the time for color commentary, and I didn’t care. As we fought through the animal-headed, armored monsters that had been a minor threat last time and weren’t even a speed bump for the mech or for Tori now, it was all they could do to keep up. Minecraft-looking experience orbs covered the ground; Tori and I scooped them up between waves of monsters.

  Even the Warband folded in seconds. We’d murdered it quickly last time, but this time? This time, they died before the system even displayed their nameplate. Tori Gravity Welled, I fired a trio of grenades, and she finished them off with a Crush. That was it.

  Boss Defeated: The Warband

  Dungeon Delvers who were not in the arena will receive fifty percent of your team’s experience.

  Area Message: Norse Street’s second floor has unlocked. This floor will remain unlocked for twenty-four hours, after which time the first floor will reset.

  “A new speed record! Hal and Tori break their old record by almost eight seconds!’ the announcer shouted. “And, since they’re a returning team, it’s unlikely they’ll slow down until the Runelord!”

  “You’re absolutely right! The only thing that might slow them down is Tori’s one weakness—the promise of a 100% full clear! They haven’t succeeded at that mission yet,” the other announcer said. I could almost feel his smirk.

  “Hal, he’s right! We haven’t—“

  “Don’t even think about it. We’re not killing the Runelord yet anyway!” I yelled over the announcers. Then we hurried into the fortress.

  It took almost ten frantic minutes of killing to clear out the fortress and the maze inside. The mech’s side was both a blessing and a curse. It fit almost perfectly inside the dungeon’s wooden hallways, and the dungeon’s defenders could only attack from one side, no matter what they did. Even better, its armor was thick enough to turn their weapons.

  But it meant Tori was bored, and a bored Tori was a dangerous Tori.

  So, for the ten minutes I clogged the way forward, I tried to keep Tori’s mind off the fact that she could only occasionally cast a spell between the mech’s arm and body. We pushed our way through the spiraling, knot-like halls, moving both faster and more sedately than the first time. Wolf Raiders and Bear Warriors fell before me, and I stomped through.

  Then we stepped into the Runelord’s room, he encased himself in runed stone armor, and we set to work building the glowing, runic bridge. It took a couple of minutes of ignoring the Runelord’s stone weapons and dragging him out of the armor, then planting the runes in the right pattern to open the bridge. The staircase led us up and into the museum, then into the Rat’s Nest.

  It reeked just as bad as before, or maybe even more. The pipes still stank of sewage, even though they were undeniably clean. There had to be a thousand people in here, or maybe more, and even if the Rat’s Nest wasn’t an active sewer, that many people had needs. The reality was that they were getting rid of their waste somewhere—and that somewhere was probably the vertical pipe reaching deep down into the depths below.

  “Okay, Hal, now we’re here. What’s next?” Tori asked. She wasn’t even breathing hard from our massacre of Norse Street.

  “Now, we look for Theresa Mays,” I replied as I pulled the mech into my inventory and looked around. There were a lot of eyes on us, and most of them looked hostile—and scared. I raised my hands. “Hey, we’re not here for a fight! We just want to talk to Theresa!”

  A murmur ran through the crowd, but no one moved for a minute. Then two folks, a man and a young woman, took off down one of the three intersecting pipes overhead. “We’re fine with waiting,” I muttered.

  It took almost fifteen minutes before Theresa Mays showed up.

  Theresa Mays: Level Sixty-Three

  Class: Runeforger

  I stared at her. She was definitely the same woman—the intense eyes in a slight glare, the grey-black curls, and everything. But there was a lot more grey now, just a few weeks after the last time I’d seen her, and the intensity in her eyes was echoed by something new.

  “What do you want, Hal?” she asked.

  “Well, good to see you too, Theresa,” I said.

  She stared at me, eyes hardening. “I don’t have time for this shit, Hal. I’ve got three thousand people in here, and they’re counting on me and a few others like me to keep them safe and get them through this. What. Do you. Want?”

  I watched her carefully, but it still took me a minute to see it. Something had gone horribly wrong here—or was going horribly wrong right now—and Theresa was bearing the brunt of it. What was in her eyes wasn’t just defiance, fierceness, and a little anger. It was carefully, but barely, hidden exhaustion.

  “We just want to talk,” I said, “but we need to have that conversation somewhere private. Is there anywhere we can do that?”

  “No.”

  “No, huh?” Tori asked. “We handled Rosehill for you, and we got Bobby Richards out of it safely. And you owe me a shot at the Runelord—for real this time.”

  “Tori,” I said quietly.

  She ignored me. “Hal just wants to talk, in private. But if you’re not interested in that, we’ll leave, circle back around, and take out the Runelord. That’ll be the last time he dies, and the last time you get to use Norse Street as a shield. Remember the rules? They’re not respawning anymore. Your call, but remember, I’m just taking what I’m owed.”

  “Tori,” I said a second time.

  Theresa’s eyes narrowed even more. Then she nodded tersely. “Follow me.” She led us up a narrow flight of stairs to the highest pipe in the Rat’s Nest, then past a wooden palisade that looked identical to the ones in Norse Street, except that it plugged the entire concrete pipe except for a narrow wooden door. There was nothing past it except the end of the pipe, a smaller, narrow one opening upward with a grate blocking it, and a desk with two chairs.

  “Sit,” Theresa said. She took one of the chairs, then stared at me. I motioned to Tori, and she took the chair.

  “What’s going on here, Theresa?” I asked.

  “We’re dying, Hal. Everyone knows it. They’re pretending I have an answer, but I don’t,” she said. Her facade fell off, the anger and defiance melted away, and what was left was exhaustion and hopelessness. “Not a good answer, at least. I was hoping you were Bobby. He’d know what to do here.”

  “How, specifically, are you dying?” I asked.

  “Because Bobby Richards hasn’t been by in a while, and because ever since this phase started, the food crates haven’t been showing up consistently.”