The shudder that ran through the plane as the wheels touched the tarmac woke me from my nap. I groaned, stretching my arms above my head while my neck popped and cracked.

  "Man, it's so nice to be able to take a nap." I groaned as I stood from my rather spacious seat. Sometimes I still wondered at sleep even now. After so long in the Soul-Sheer, deprived of the ability to sleep at all, a good nap felt different. It was much more satisfying than I ever remembered before.

  Flying private also had its privileges, it seemed. There was no sardine section in the Banner's private jet; the worst seats I had seen on the way in would be considered something like premium business on any other plane. The Banner folks enjoyed their luxuries by all appearances. Or at least any of them important enough to warrant a trip in the jet did.

  I steadied myself with a hand on the seat back as the plane began its rapid deceleration. I could feel Vipera practically quivering with excitement within me. It'd been a while since I'd really let her loose. She had grown stronger right alongside me and was just as frustrated as I had been with our recent lack of progress. At least that was what I was able to discern from the bond we shared. Communicating with the monster snake that lived in my soul and couldn't use words, only feelings, wasn't an exact science.

  Reaching down to the floor, as I felt the plane come to a halt, I snagged the small duffel bag I had packed for the trip and began making my way towards the doors. By the time I made it to the door, one of the pilots had already made their way back to open the door. Already it was swung wide when I reached it, letting in a rush of cold, dry air. The tarmac at the Yellowknife private terminal looked like every tarmac in Canada, but meaner, a flatness so extreme it left the sky feeling way too big, too wide.

  I zipped my jacket and stepped off, blinking against the blinding whiteness that poured off every snowdrift and roof line. Not that there were that many of those. Only a half dozen or so buildings made up the entire compound, smaller than the Toronto facility by a fair margin. Then again, there was no knowing how much of it was underground. As I stepped onto the tarmac, the Banner's patch practically glowed on my shoulder in the half-dark—subtle, if you weren't looking for it, but I could practically feel the local Welcome Committee lining up rifles behind every window in sight.

  On the tarmac, a single man was waiting for me, one I might have described as a small mountain not so long ago. My stats had made me much larger, but this man gave off the feeling that he had always been large. As if he'd been carved from marble rather than born from a woman.

  His handshake would have made glass flinch its way back to being sand, but he had the restraint not to try to break my bones. Something I wasn't quite certain he couldn't do. A relative rarity these days.

  "Kaesor," he said in a voice that didn't even need to be raised to threaten, "Morton. Call me Kels."

  I nodded. The man radiated a don't-fuck-around vibe in a way that was, if anything, more convincing than the actual drill sergeants I'd met. I let him hold the lead and waited. He sized me up, then flicked his gaze to the duffel bag. "That's all you brought?"

  "Don't need more than a couple of changes of clothing," I said. I wasn't inclined to reveal my [Inventory] more widely than I already had. Not to people I knew nothing about at the very least. He half-turned and jerked his chin at a waiting SUV, as utilitarian as they came, the kind of truck that looked like it rolled out of the womb ready to bulldoze a moose.

  "We're on the clock," he said, as I fell into step beside him. "Rest of the team's already staged, you can leave your bag in the vehicle." I nodded simply in response. I wasn't concerned about the bag at all. There wasn't anything in it that mattered in reality. I kept extras, among other things, in my [Inventory]. I'd read enough stories and played enough games to know that keeping my [Inventory] stocked would probably save my ass one day in the future. Rather than head into one of the facility buildings, we piled into the back of what reminded me of nothing so much as an oversized sprinter van.

  The interior was stripped down, all hard plastic and metal crossbars, and had the smell of industrial cleaner clinging to every surface. Cheap utilitarian benches faced each other along the sides for maximum awkwardness. I wasn't surprised to see three other people inside, all with the telltale aura of the system's touch. It was hard to describe to someone uninitiated—more than just a physical air, more like the sense you get when someone is not just watching you, but 'sizing you up for parts and a body bag'. I recognized it, I'd given enough things and people that exact same look both with and without my aura.

  First was a woman, mid-thirties maybe, with close-cropped red hair and a glare that looked like it had been sharpened on the inside of a whiskey bottle. Black tactical gear, white Banner patch on the arm, and the kind of sinewy build that promised a lot of fun in close quarters. Next to her, a guy with the battered nose and missing tooth grin of someone who had been asked a lot of times to stop talking shit and never once considered it. His military cut was so severe it bordered on masochistic, and the tan on his skin didn’t look like it came from a bottle. The third ranker was the type that looked like he’d be more at home in an office, a scrawny dude with pale, ink-stained fingers and glasses so thick the lenses caught the world like bug eyes. There wasn’t even a pretense of social hierarchy; they just glared, nodded, and let the silence do the introductions.

  Kels jerked a thumb at each in turn. "This is Signe,"—the redhead only flicked her eyes at me, her jaw working like she was actively chewing through a stress ball—"Angus,"—missing-tooth just raised two fingers in a wave—" and Felix." Bug Eyes didn't bother to look up from whatever he was scribbling in a battered black journal.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  I nodded to the group of them before I dropped into a seat, tucking my duffel underneath the seat with my heels, not concerned with being gentle about it. The motor roared to life, and the vehicle began to roll forward.

  That’s no normal motor, definitely custom.

  Maybe we’ll make better time than I thought.

  ——-

  I glanced over at Kels briefly when he rose from his seat and made his way up to the cab. The man was as serious and no nonsense as anyone I'd ever met; that much had certainly come through during the briefing he'd held while we were en route. It was just a rehashing of everything I'd been over with Uncle Wolf and David before leaving. Rogue dungeon. Timer ticking down. Team missing. Recover if possible, return proof of KIA if not. Clear the dungeon. If the Vish are involved, flatten them with prejudice.

  Simple, clean and uncomplicated.

  Admittedly, Kels had some good information as well, though. The dungeon entrance was located near Prelude Lake, a few hours outside Yellowknife itself. Almost right between Prelude Lake and Prosperous Lake, in fact. The naming sense could not have been worse, given the risk of a horde of monsters spilling out into the world from between them, and the likely fate of the team originally sent to prevent that outcome. The whole area was mountainous and heavily forested, which we all knew meant we'd likely be giving up the comfort of the vehicles eventually.

  There were reports of Vish activity in the area, but they were several days old at this point, and the Vish were likely long gone from the area, much to my disappointment. No one knew what exactly the Vish were up to this far out; it certainly didn't fit their normal MO or goals since they were basically magical organized crime. Their usual haunts were border towns and ports of call, not the harsh lands of the frozen north.

  The van ground to a halt, and I looked up, senses flaring out of habit. I relaxed when I sensed nothing out of the ordinary. Kels returned from the cab of the vehicle at that point.

  "We're on foot from here, the van won't handle the off-roading." He explained in his gravelly voice. As a group, we piled out of the van on the side of the road. I stopped to stretch my arms over my head, luxuriating in the cracks and pops of my joints as my body reset itself. Meanwhile, I caught a look at the other members of the team as they dragged their gear out of the van. Shocking, absolutely no one Kels favoured a large sword and shield combo that gave me an odd feeling looking at them for too long. A flicker of [All-Seeing Eye] confirmed that his weapons were heavily enchanted, though I couldn't decipher what those enchantments were. His team members' weapons were much less magical in nature, in a way that made me suspect that Kels' weapons were created by someone with a looting power similar to my own. Interestingly, I'd learned during my time around the Banner that my [Spirit Forge], while on the rarer side of abilities, was far from unique as Skill archetypes went. This was just a nice bit of confirmation that there were others out there. Admittedly, it did make me curious what the differences might be between my own looting ability and whatever had spawned Kels' weapons.

  "Three clicks due north east, let's move." Kels barked out. I was content to follow his lead until we reached the dungeon, so we moved as a group. We moved as only a group of Rankers with some levels under their belts would be able to. At a dead sprint, we flew sure footed over the snowy ground, weaving in and out of the trees. Every one of us was advanced far enough in levels and stats that we had long left behind normal human physical limitations, and it showed. Where normal hikers would have conserved energy and certainly not been moving at a dead sprint, we approached obstacles differently. We flew over rocky outcroppings with barely a thought, propelling ourselves over or around at preternatural speeds.

  There were differences in the way we moved, and those differences drew my attention as we ran. Kels moved in straight lines, at high speeds. It was almost like he was leaping from foot to foot rather than running. While Signe was his polar opposite, her legs blurring beneath her as she flowed over the landscape with a grace even I couldn't quite match. No better comparison of Strength and Dexterity than the two of them. Control vs power.

  Angus was much the same as Kels, but with a little more grace to his movements. I imagined the similarity was more than skin deep as well. I'd bet his stat sheet looked damn similar to Kels' as well. The last member of the group was an interesting case, moving just as fast as the others but in jittering, skipping movements. Dull blue light covered his limbs, even without my magical vision. Felix was obviously using some sort of Skill to keep up with the rest of us.

  The cold northern air was biting as we ran, but we made good time. [All-Seeing Eye] flickered on and off at intervals as I continued to confirm that we were heading towards the dungeon entrance. There was no need for the crude aura tracing method I had used to track dungeon entrances in the past, finding them almost by their 'Shadow', so to speak. With [All-Seeing Eye], I could see the currents and flows of the ambient mana directly and simply follow them.

  "One click, due directly north," I said, glancing around at Kels and his team members. They all nodded confirmation, and we raced on through the night.

  ——

  Cresting a rocky rise, we came within sight of the dungeon entrance. As a group, we rushed forward. We were all very aware that we were on the clock and that the clock was slowly ticking down on us. None of us was even breathing hard when we arrived at the dungeon entrance. I watched as the other dropped the packs they'd carried and silently began donning their actual gear. I was grateful not have to deal with that particular issue. It was several minutes later that Kels was in something that resembled a mix of modern combat gear and medieval half-plate. The others wore similar outfits but with less overt plating than their leader.

  The selection of weapons among them was more diverse, with Signe favouring a dagger and a long wooden wand, while Angus carried a large two-handed war hammer. Felix was by far the oddball here, carrying a modern rifle that looked suspiciously like an AR-15. A cursory glance at the rifle with [All-Seeing Eye] revealed the rifle as being anything but ordinary. I could see a strange tether that ran between Felix and the rifle as well. It had to be some sort of Skill bonding him to his weapon or vice versa.

  “Hold up.” I cast my gaze around the area. Something wasn’t right.

  Sure, there was the dungeon entrance. It was like a glaring hole in the side of reality to my more magical senses. That wasn't what was causing the sense of unease that was currently gnawing on my bones. There was something small just out of place, like a picture frame just barely askew on the wall. Pushing my focus into my eyes and [All-Seeing Eye] as I glared over the area. That was until my eyes fell on a faint flicker of black in the sea of blue that was the ambient mana, endlessly washing outward from the dungeon entrance. I stalked over towards the small patch of black that looked like nothing so much as a twisting trail of smoke to my [All-Seeing Eye]. It took a few moments to hone in on the magical residue through the wash of mana from the dungeon. I knelt down, snow crunching under my boots to get a better look.

  The small black plume of twisting residue wavered in the mana wash.

  It was off. Wrong, like looking sideways through a mirror. It was wrong on a fundamental level.

  "Maybe Vish, maybe something else, something worse," I announced to Kels and his team.

  It wasn't like that dungeon. It wasn't quite the same as it felt in the dungeon where Matt had been taken. It was close, though. Far closer than I liked or wanted to consider too deeply. Where the dungeon's corrupted mana had felt pure, almost homogeneous, it was as if this were diluted. Twisted further, yet weakened somehow.

  A look passed between the members of Kels’ team, a look I couldn’t easily decipher.

  “We proceed as planned,” Kels ground out in his gravel voice, “We’re staring down the ticking clock. We can’t afford to wait or hesitate.”

  That was good enough for me.

  After all, I was going in there one way or another.