Today, the New York East Grid Botanical Lab was especially important to Kelly. She needed to take apart magical staffs and crystals there, especially after seeing what the crystal inside that cube could really do. Keeping the lab from getting crushed was critical.

  Which made the oversized sphere at Luigi's equally important.

  “So this Deadtech paperweight,” Kelly said, tapping the case, firing questions in quick succession. “You test it? How tough are the things it makes? What's it not do? How big can it go? A ‘full-scale replica of my ego’ big? What’s the catch?”

  "It can pretty much build any static structure you feed it," Luigi said, polishing the cut glass case with his sleeve. "Although it needs a little time to charge up and deploy, and it doesn't do moving parts. And the hardlight constructs only last a few hours." He paused for effect, meeting her eyes. "But like I said, hard as reinforced carbon steel. All light. Crazy, right?"

  The bridge was massive, but the chunk headed for the lab was only a few apartment blocks’ worth of metal and stone—the metal had lodged into the ground, trapping them. One well-placed obstacle could nudge the deadly rainstorm somewhere else.

  If she told the sphere to hold up a few million tons of bridge, it would actually work, instead of just giving the rubble a nice ambient glow on its way down. That would buy her the time she needed in the facility before half the city went kaboom.

  “Crazy,” Kelly agreed, her mind already building a cathedral of brutalist supports and load-bearing structures. Hell, it didn’t even need to be complicated—it just needed to work. A few hours was a lifetime. Long enough to keep the GMO plant lab from being buried by a bridge the size of a skyscraper losing parts.

  “What’s the designs you got in mind?” Luigi asked curiously.

  Kelly gave him a flat stare. “The design is called ‘Not Getting Crushed.’” It didn’t have to be complicated at all.

  Kelly’s encounter with the angel and the thing wearing it like a suit—the Architect—had ripped the world wide and opened her eyes to new possibilities.

  Namely; Skills.

  That morning, before she'd even pulled on pants, Kelly had scoured the net for anything about 'Skills.'

  The theories were a mess of contradictions. One faction argued for ancient, undetectable portals or a lone visitor who'd tampered with human history, which would explain why magic in their world showed up in pre-Collapse media and ancient human myths. Their opponents called them lunatics, claiming it was just convergent evolution between realities—their universe accidentally generating a world that matched our stories. The reigning champion was the Many-Worlds take of quantum mechanics, a snooze fest of people saying that with infinite universes, one where magic worked was bound to pop up.

  Every theory debunked another. Kelly could have spent an entire loop debating them, but she was a practical learner. She preferred to figure things out by shooting things and the simple elegance of blowing shit up.

  She thought about them, both of them, The angel and its god, muttering simple words and the world just… listening. It had to be skills, all evidence pointed towards that conclusion. It was like the word ‘Status,’ or Titles, but so much more powerful and varied.

  She, as a member of this universe, had no skills. She had to consciously think or say specific prerequisite words like 'equip' to use her Titles. At first, she’d assumed they were just using a more advanced form of her Titles.

  But the angel, and the god wearing him, never once said “Equip.” And they’d stacked multiple, simultaneous effects, layering power upon power. Merging their effects—a defensive barrier, a concussive blast, that terrifying sense of absolute perception. Titles couldn’t do that. You equipped one, you used it, you moved on.

  She’d even tried it, muttering “Fortress” under her breath like an idiot. Nothing happened.

  It was a different system. A better one. The Status had given her the free, ‘lite’-version toolkit while the out-of-town deities had the full, paid-access suite.

  Title switching held a hard limitation she couldn’t overcome; she could cycle them fast enough to give a hummingbird a headache, but she was still only ever getting one title’s effect at a time.

  But with skills? Overlapping?

  She pictured layering Giantslayer and Death’s Foe. That simple combination would compound with her werewolf boost, upping her speed boost by almost five hundred percent. Her other physical attributes would get a three hundred percent boost. Instead of barely reaching the expert stage, it would instantly make her a ‘Tank’ at the very peak of the stage, almost an Elite. She could finally return all those How to Fight Good: Conflict Resolution Using Only Kicks books she’d never read. She’d have to cancel her preorder of the sequel, How to Fight Gooder: An Advanced Guide for People Who Already Fight Good, too.

  This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

  Two. Just two skills, overlapped, could make her a borderline Elite.

  That meant no matter how many Titles Kelly stacked on her résumé, she’d still be playing catch-up with the real deals—the ones that could hold a conversation and probably do your taxes while levitating a latte in the other hand, living on the other side of the glowing holes in the sky.

  So, if she could use the botanical lab to figure out how a piece of dead wood and a crystal could throw a fireball, or how a basic-ass metal axe with a shiny rock in it could split the ground open… then maybe she could build something to bridge the gap.

  She could definitely improve her monomolecular switchblade. But why stop at a better knife?

  "You and that lady. Everything's a big secret.” Luigi shook his head, then gestured at the sphere. “At least tell me what this one is for,”

  "I'm correcting a design flaw."

  Luigi stared at her. The words held no meaning for him. He finally just nodded, a gesture of pure defeat. “Okay, sure.”

  After Luigi gave her the location for Obsidian's base, he pressed his palm to the translucent case. It hissed open. He retrieved the heavy Deadtech sphere and handed it over. They walked out of the back room, the wall sealing itself shut behind them, leaving no trace of the vault. Kelly left Luigi's shop, climbed into her truck, and started the drive for the East Grid.

  Then the street exploded.

  An enormous creature, several meters tall and visibly coming apart, crashed through the front of a decayed tenement. It skidded to a stop, shredded asphalt spraying. It looked like a bear made of warped crystal and exposed muscle, with too many jointed limbs. Its many eyes, each weeping a different colored fluid, fixed on her truck. Its eyes set on Kelly with a raw, consuming hunger as it raised a claw that sparked with unstable energy, its whole form visibly warping and shuddering as the mist twisted it from the inside out in a violent transformation for all to see. People stumbled and ran.

  A wet, grating noise came from it. Then words, forced out through a throat not meant for them. "PAIN. THE AIR. BURNS."

  Kelly slammed the brakes. The truck screeched to a halt just inches from the creature's thrashing limbs. She reversed. The mutated creature followed.

  She threw the door open and got out.

  "My truck!" she screamed, throwing her hands in the air. Her sudden, shrill outrage made the creature jerk its head back. "You almost wrecked it! And you’re still trying!? You know how much this costs on an intern's salary?! The payments I have to make every month?!"

  The-magical-scientist-battle-maniac immediately rushed to the creature. She equipped the Death’s Foe Title. She swung a bat that sprang to life from her wrist at the abomination. It was a desperate attempt. She needed to stop it from crushing her truck. She was trying to create distance between the two. She checked if it was safe. Was there enough distance? Was it safe?

  No. It was still way too close.

  Kelly was overwhelmed with indignation. She quickly considered going on a personal Templar, Genghis Khan, Gideon Vaughn style truck-crusade. She would target the abomination. Every abomination. She would enact holy retribution on every portal being she could find. She would show them a demon straight out of south New York.

  But… Kelly couldn’t bear to risk losing her beloved truck. It was her first car. She acquired it a month before the world’s end. She acquired it through the credits and credit line offered to her by her internship. She could already drive, but she had mastered driving it through the loops. It had been with her since her new life began. It almost felt like it never forgot her. Somehow, by some miracle, through every loop, it had never been destroyed.

  “Back off! My truck!” Kelly shouted. “Try it and I will personally rearrange your life!”

  With a depressed sigh, the intern scientist shifted the bat in her grip and concentrated. She triggered its light-chainsaw mode. Molecular edges engaged. Superheated edge activated. She prepared to damage the weapon’s integrity. She raised the buzzing, shrieking instrument.

  “Hey. Ugly.” The creature’s head swiveled. “Yeah, you. I’m talking.”

  The thing took a heavy step forward. Its voice was a grating pile of broken sounds. “Prey… comes close… pain is…”

  “Save it.” Kelly hefted the chainsaw. “You see the big, beautiful machine you almost sat on? Don’t do that.”

  The creature groaned, oozing forward.

  “Hey, look at me.” Kelly’s arm went back. “You getting the picture? No?” She cocked her arm back further. “Figure it out.”

  [Title: Giantbane (V) equipped]

  Kelly tossed the spinning chainsaw directly at the creature’s chest. It foolishly tried to bat the weapon away with its hand due to its rapidly progressing mutation. Kelly's lenses caught a glow of mana surrounding it, which to Kelly's surprise, caused her atom splitting weapon to veer off course, partially cutting through the creature's glowing protection to firmly lodge itself in the creature's throat, the weapon's spinning edge causing it to slowly slide through the creature's shield, neck, and torso.

  The sickly beast looked at the weapon, then back at Kelly, confused and horrified as the spinning edge split the layers of its magical defenses and body apart. It made a wet, gurgling sound. Its eyes found Kelly’s.

  “What’s the matter?” Kelly asked, watching the chainsaw do its work. “You break my things, I break you. That’s the deal. Should’ve sprung for the premium shield package.”

  The creature split open from the inside. It erupted. Toxic flesh, searing light, and swirling mist.

  “Guess you’re not as strong as that pigeon, or even those bones underground,” Kelly said. “Skill issue.”

  Kelly nodded, relieved. The Status appeared to agree with her problem solving.

  [Rare Title gained: (Grade-I) Unerring Marksman]