The basic concept behind our boat was simple.

  The Bottle acted as a pseudo-compressor. Zane—with Fireheart—worked as a fuel injection system. He used the Perfumer’s Bottle to set a ‘trap’ spell in the water behind us. Then I triggered it by touching the edge of it, superheating the water—and the air around it. The water expanded into steam instantly, pushing the scrap of metal I’d bent into the rough shape of a boat forward about fifty feet.

  Then it drifted to a stop, and we repeated the process.

  It was ugly, stupid, and extremely uncomfortable. The jostling, ugly crossing had to be bad for my back, and I’d regret it if I survived to be older. But we were gaining on the broken barge. And equally importantly, we were about to complete the first objective and exit the Grasslands.

  Area Message: The Urban Sprawl’s third floor has unlocked. This floor will remain unlocked for twenty-four hours, after which time the first and second floors will reset.

  We hit the beach less than a minute after the message came in—close enough behind Taven Liu that we could almost see the dust from his footsteps. “We’re gaining on him,” I said.

  “Levels are evening out, too,” Zane agreed.

  Tier Two Dungeon: Urban Sprawl (Floor Two)

  Objective: Defeat the Contraption (0/1)

  Objective: Defeat the Foreman (0/1)

  Objective: Survive (0/1)

  Completion: 28%

  Fragile Walls: This dungeon is close to breaking. Its inhabitants will be freed if a threshold of Delver deaths inside is reached.

  Break Counter: 0/5

  Decayed Seal: You cannot leave this dungeon until its exit condition is met or it is completed.

  Objective: Secure the Beacon (0/1)

  The Waypoint Beacon is Currently Contested. Claim it to exit the dungeon early.

  There was dust everywhere. In between the smokestacks. Pouring down from the sky as ash. Shaking off the factory walls that surrounded us on all sides as the machinery inside thumped and groaned. Towering walls of brick and concrete hemmed the dungeon in, and a fog wall ceiling pinned the smog in just as much, letting even that rain down on us. The Urban Sprawl loomed in front of us. I’d expected the Chicago suburbs, not the industrial heart of the country.

  But what was Whiting—and what was Gary—but part of a factory town sprawling out from Chicago past the Michigan border? It made sense.

  It also stank of oil, chemicals, and poison. I’d gotten used to the smell of Chicago, but this was worse. This was worse than the pig building in the summer back home. It was almost bad enough to make me lose focus on the other thing my senses were reporting.

  Resonant Charge. Lots of it.

  “We’re close,” I said. “The Beacon is on this floor.”

  “This dungeon is awful,” Zane shot back.

  “I know. Just try to breathe through your nose so it filters some of the chemicals. Stuff that nasty shouldn’t get in your lungs, even if you can just heal it off with a couple of Body points.” I hefted the Siege Hammer and headed into the maze of factories.

  The resonance wasn’t anything like it had been in the last few dungeons. In Rosehill Mausoleum, it had been an ambient thing, while in the Stronghold, the orcs had been using Charge in their machines—and the dungeon’s designers had used Charge to operate certain challenges. Voril had used Charge to do it. Either that or, more likely, she’d had someone else do it after designing the dungeon herself.

  But here, there were only two sources of Charge. There was the all-but-undetectable ambient Charge that existed on Earth. I couldn’t feel it directly, but I knew it was probably here, since it was everywhere. Without Erika, though, I couldn’t detect it. And then there was one brilliant, almost overwhelming point of resonance.

  I ignored the obvious pathway through the maze of factories and assembly lines—some of which shot conveyor belts across the street, shifting parts to machines that I couldn’t identify the purpose of. Instead, I ducked into the nearest concrete-and-aluminum building. Zane followed me.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Worker #15942: Level 45 Monster

  The thing standing at the assembly line wasn’t human. It was roughly man-sized and, at first glance, looked a little like a person in blue overalls and a light blue shirt. But its six arms were mechanical, and as it turned to look at me, its eyes glowed a soft pinkish-red color. It didn’t move to attack.

  Zane stared at it over my shoulder. I readied the Siege Hammer.

  Then a screeching alarm went off overhead. I jumped, whirled, and tried to find its source—a speaker, high above, next to a camera. Worker #15942 turned back to the assembly line and continued working.

  “What’s going on here?” Zane asked.

  I shrugged. “No clue, but the Workers don’t look hostile—or at least this one isn’t. They look…busy.”

  Busy wasn’t the right word. They looked frantic, not busy. Like they were desperate to finish their work, or just to maintain their pace. Worker #15942 was suddenly working fast enough that its six arms were nothing but blurs in the air. It and about fifty other Workers filled the room in front of us, crowded around an assembly line that weaved its way across the concrete floor. Pistons slammed down, conveyor belts hummed and whirred, and the whole thing operated at breakneck speed.

  “I’m not looking for a fight here,” I said quietly, “but the Waypoint Beacon is on the far side of this room.”

  Zane nodded. “The Crusader hasn’t been here. There aren’t enough bodies. Let’s move.”

  I nodded. But where to move? The whole room was nothing but a tangle of conveyors, and wherever this was supposed to be, OSHA safety regulations weren’t in effect. The entire room was a death trap.

  As if to drive home that point, a Worker overbalanced, fell onto the line, and received two piston strikes to the chest as it slid down the conveyor. It didn’t even scream; its six arms reached up as if to catch the first piston, but by the time the second slammed through its eyes, it had stopped moving altogether.

  Every single Worker paused. They stared for a moment. And then a voice echoed from the speaker overhead. A single worker pulled the body off the line, carried it to a pile of other bodies, and rejoined the others, who’d continued working.

  “Well, I guess we’ve just got to go for it, huh?” I said. Then I stepped onto the work floor.

  Knowing the burning, red-orange pillar of light was nearby was one thing. Getting to it was proving to be a completely different problem.

  Tori knew it wasn’t that the dungeon’s entrance didn’t want to be found. It was obviously the massive ship docked on the lake. It was more that, somehow, the entire god-damned battle had shifted to be less about Whiting and more about Lake Calumet. Tori also knew that was partially her fault. The Crusade had to have wanted her artillery silenced. But it wasn’t all her fault.

  Mostly, it was the stupid pillar of light.

  She Levitated an overgrown compact car, straining under the weight, and Pushed it toward a group of Crusaders led by—of course—a fire mage. The mage wasn’t ready for the sheer mass to hit him, and he folded against the hood as it smashed into the ground, screaming in pain.

  Tori didn’t care. She also didn’t care when Carol stabbed the fire mage in the chest, pushed her spear through his back, and then ripped it out. As far as she was concerned, the Fireborn Crusade deserved what was coming to them.

  Push. Pull. Gravity Well. Mop up the rest.

  “Are we close?” Carol asked.

  Tori stared at Carol. She was wiping blood from her face. Had she been hit? No. It was someone else’s blood. Okay. Good. “We’re getting there. Keep going and we’ll get to the entrance.”

  “Great.” Carol kept going, and as they boarded the ship, Tori saw it—the fog gate.

  And she saw a team of Fireborn delvers push through it, weapons at the ready. None of them was under Level Fifty.

  But not one of them was over Level Fifty-Five.

  “Let’s go, Carol. We need to get in there,” Tori said. Then she broke into a sprint, heading for the door as fast as she could. She slammed into the fog, then through it.

  The smell of burning grass hit her, and she opened her eyes to a raging inferno and the beginnings of what looked like a battle to the death.

  Jessica Silvers was a mile and a half back, behind the hill Calvin had taken as his observation post.

  The battlefield wasn’t her place. She wanted nothing to do with it. But the battle itself? That was something she’d wanted for a long time. Museumtown was at a crucial phase in its development. Her degree in paleoanthropology had been coming in handy like that, even if the steps in a community’s existence were coming significantly faster than they should be. They’d weathered a single crisis—the end of Phase One—thanks to their heroes.

  But the second crisis, in the form of the Fireborn Crusader and his army, was something that a handful of heroes couldn’t fix by themselves. The true threat wasn’t the outcome of this battle. It was that Museumtown would break apart in the aftermath. If they lost…when they lost…would the community be strong enough to survive thanks to her efforts to make it a better place, or would it be because of Calvin’s instilled, militaristic discipline? Or would it crack and splinter, then get absorbed by the more powerful dictatorship to the southeast?

  Those were the questions that plagued Jessica’s mind as she waited for the first wounded to arrive.

  But there was another one: would Tori be alright?

  Calvin’s battle plan had almost gotten Jessica mad enough to kill him. Every time Jessica had agreed to one of Hal Riley’s knuckleheaded dungeon delves, he’d been there to take care of her stepdaughter, or she’d been confident that the three teenagers could handle it on their own. And even then, Jessica had done nothing but worry for Tori. And now, at the last minute, Calvin had thrown her onto the battlefield without Carol or Hal…or even Zane.

  If something happened to Tori, Calvin was a dead man. And Jessica was extremely aware that the power vacuum that would come from Calvin Rollins’s death at the hands of one of Museumtown’s other leaders would fracture the community just like Jessica was worried about.

  But sometimes…sometimes, sacrifices had to be made.

  A technical rolled into the makeshift hospital she’d spent the last half-hour setting up, and Jessica Silvers took one more look at the towering spire of red-orange light in the distance. Whether that was something the Crusade was doing, something to do with the messages she’d been getting from the System, or a completely different mess, Jessica didn’t know. All she knew was that Tori was definitely in the middle of it.

  Then her focus was almost entirely on the men and women being set down next to the technical. She had just enough focus to notice two things.

  First, that the technical was the same one Tori had ridden into battle on.

  And second, that Tori wasn’t with it.