The Sarcophagus hummed, a low, predatory vibration that resonated through my legs. I turned back to the holographic display, the red light casting long, jagged shadows against the concrete walls.

  "Help us?" Valentina scoffed, though the fire in her voice had dimmed to a smolder. "You just threatened to kill us fifteen minutes ago."

  "I didn't say I would kill you. I just protect myself," I tapped the screen, scrolling through the lists. "Do you have any idea how much death and horror I've seen? How many lives I've watched end? Do you have any idea what it's like to watch your home burn to ashes? To watch your family in all but name die?"

  Valentina opened her mouth, then snapped it shut.

  "Didn't think so." I muttered, flicking through the menus. "I said I'd kill anyone who stopped me from getting out of this damned forsaken reality. Different thing. And considering your current combat rating is barely above 'Athletic Civilian with a Sparkler,' stopping me isn't something you need to worry about."

  I ignored her bristling indignation and focused on the screen. My mana was still crawling up at a pathetic rate. Without my specialized ammo, I was a bluff. Without medical supplies, I was a walking bruise. And without a plan, I was dead.

  "Star Sapphire," I said, not looking back. "Step forward."

  The girl froze, her glasses flashing in the dim light. She looked at her friends, then slowly shuffled toward the pod, clutching her Sapphire Lens like a shield. "Um. Er. Yes?"

  "Your polearm," I said. "It was a custom construct, wasn't it? Hard-light projection over a mana-conductive alloy core? Not a standard point purchase for your class and signature?"

  "Y-yes," she stammered. "It was... well, it was a mid-grade foci. I spent six months of allowance and my share of our first dungeon run on the core. How'd you guess?"

  "It was garbage," I said flatly. "I snapped it with two fingers. If a Husk had done that, you’d be having a seizure at the hospital right now with the doctors panicking over your braindead remains."

  She paled, her knuckles white. "I... I see."

  I didn't say sorry. Apologies were for people who couldn't fix their mistakes.

  I tapped the Class I Melee catalog. The list populated with brutal efficiency.

  Vibro-Knife (Standard): 150 Pts

  Mono-Filament Wire Spool: 300 Pts

  Grav-Hammer (Civilian Model): 800 Pts

  All options available to someone whose world had discovered the corresponding technology organically.

  I filtered for Polearms.

  "Hephaestus’s system processes the cores of the monsters we kill," I lectured, my voice falling into the rhythm of a briefing I’d heard a thousand times from Majalis. "Just to ramble to you all a bit, the Dungeons in this world aren't necessarily related directly to the Chaos Beasts from last night. They are bleed-ins from the Sea of Imagination, a realm of potential and possibility where all of reality kinda came from. It's a place that exists both everywhere and nowhere, and the fabric between it and the physical world is constantly shifting."

  The girls all shared a look.

  "Anyway, it's leaking through now because some idiot in your world likely dug too deep, and broke the walls at some point in the recent past. I've seen it before. It's a common problem in worlds that experience a rapid technological growth spurt or occultists that live too long, but don't have the ability to understand the dangers of what they are doing. The dungeons are like a pressure valve, venting the excess Imaginary Energy so that it doesn't explode and rip apart the entire plane all at once. The creatures that come out are the same - a sort of pressure release to prevent the world from being overwhelmed by the Imaginary Energy that bleeds through. In theory."

  "In theory?" Maya echoed.

  I nodded.

  "It's complicated stuff. I don't fully understand it myself. But the point is that the monsters in your Dungeons and the ones I killed last night are related in a way, even if they aren't the same creatures. Imaginary Phantoms may as well be sentient. They will leak out from the rifts sometimes, and cause trouble by reenacting what they do in stories told by humanity across the countless worlds. However, Chaos Beasts are much, much worse than Imaginary Phantoms like goblins, elves, and the standard range of video game and fantasy book monsters. The entity behind it wants to subsume and destroy all of sentient reality. You can't negotiate or reason with the Blight. It just is."

  I tapped a listing on the screen, scrolling down to a simple, elegant-looking glaive.

  [ITEM: CERAMIC-WEAVE BLUEBELL GLAIVE (MODEL 7)]

  [DESCRIPTION: TELESCOPIC SHAFT. HIGH-FREQUENCY VIBRATION EDGE. MANA-CONDUCTIVE WEAVE COMPATIBLE WITH 'BLUE' MAHOU SHOUJO.]

  [COST: 6,400 POINTS]

  It was expensive. A dent in my stockpile. But I had broken hers, and a debt was a debt.

  "Catch," I said.

  I hit purchase. The Sarcophagus hissed, a cloud of white vapor venting from the side as it slammed shut.

  Then, the front panel slid open, and a sleek, matte-white rod shot out.

  Linda squeaked and fumbled, nearly tripping in surprise, but caught the rod with both hands. It was heavy, cold, and hummed with a faint, menacing buzz.

  "Twist the grip," I instructed.

  She did. With a sharp snick, a curved, translucent blue blade erupted from the top, vibrating so fast it blurred the air around it.

  "It... it feels like it's part of my nervous system," Linda whispered, staring at the weapon in horror and delight. "The conductivity... it's practically zero resistance."

  "An old friend of mine designed that thing," I said, turning back to the screen. "Don't try to block a tank with it or anything. Deflect, then sever and saw. It cuts on the molecular level and can even whitelist specific mana signatures."

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  "Did she just..." Althea whispered to Maya. "Did she just buy her a lightsaber spear?"

  "I think so," Maya squeaked.

  "Right," I said, cracking my knuckles. "Now that the debt is settled. I need to survive."

  I had 12,050 Points remaining.

  I looked at the ammunition tab. The Withered Calyx was a hungry beast, and standard Association-grade mana shells would just jam the mechanism. I needed density.

  10-Gauge Void-Slugs (Standard): 500 Pts (Case of 250)

  10-Gauge 'Petal-Steel' Buckshot: 1,500 Pts (Case of 200)

  Thresher Fuel Cells (High-Density Ichor): 500 Pts (Pack of 5)

  I bought the Petal-Steel and the fuel. Another 2,000 points gone.

  10,050 points.

  Then, the medical tab. My ribs still felt like a jigsaw puzzle held together by willpower and spite.

  Nano-Regenerative Suite (Class I): 2,000 Pts.

  Hemo-Restore (High Density): 500 Pts (x2 Doses).

  I winced. Three thousand points.

  That was a down payment on a decent suit of environmental armor, gone in a heartbeat. But if I got into a fight with a local 'Hero' anywhere close to a teenage Lunar Knight Capsicum in this state, I’d fold like wet cardboard.

  I bought them.

  The Sarcophagus whirred, printing the injectors and the heavy, matte-black boxes of shells. I grabbed a silver medical pen and jammed it into my thigh immediately. Cold fire rushed through my veins. The ache in my chest dulled to a manageable throb.

  7,050 Points remaining.

  "You're spending a fortune," Valentina said, stepping closer. She was eyeing the catalog over my shoulder, her expression a mix of judgment and envy. "That's... if the exchange rate is one-to-one, you just blew nearly ten grand in seconds."

  "Eh, even if the mana point values of Imagine Phantoms are the same universally, your local economy might have skewed the conversion rate," I shrugged, looking through the armor section of the catalog.

  Points had many uses under Hephaestus's Systems. They could be used to construct items from the user's personal reality, like a high-quality rifle, or something from a more advanced world, like a plasma cannon.

  It was all about finding the right balance between power and cost. You could also buy upgrades to your body, though I'd never gone down that rabbit hole.

  I didn't have the points to waste on 'maybe,' and I still had nightmares of being turned into a soulless puppet. I had enough creepy needles and rods poked into me for one childhood, and the idea of taking that further was too much. I had an inkling that Star Sapphire's scanner was purchased through a custom class build, which was what made them so valuable as a medium of exchange in the first place.

  The System crafted arcane power out of an individual's Soul Graph. The culmination of nurture and nature that made them unique. A fingerprint in the aether, and the key to their true strength. The items and special abilities one could obtain through fast tracking their Soul made points virtually priceless in comparison to earthly goods.

  I'd had mine unlocked by Majalis, but my true 'power' was still a mystery to me. I had a feeling it was a lot more subtle than 'shoot the right person in the face at the right time.' That was a learned skill, not an innate talent. And in my world, we hadn't had a chance to explore it before the Blight took everything away. The only thing that mattered was killing as many of those monsters as possible.

  "The Association controls the points economy," Althea muttered, her voice growing distant. "They control the flow of credits, and they control the flow of magical items as a centralized exchange too, so that makes sense."

  I paused, looking at the catalog. I hesitated, then clicked on the [AUGMENTS] tab.

  "Star Morganite," I said.

  Maya jumped, her pigtails bobbing. "M-Me? Maya. Just Maya."

  "You're the leader," I said, turning to face her. "Which means you're the target. And right now, you're a target with a flashlight and a cheerleading routine."

  "Hey!" Maya protested, puffing her cheeks out in a way that was probably meant to be intimidating but just looked like a disgruntled hamster. "The cheerleading thing is pretty cool! Rose Radiance has a very high purity rating! The woman who gave me a Mahou Shoujo 101 say it has S-Tier cleansing potential!"

  "Purity doesn't stop a kinetic impact," I countered. "And purity won't help you when your Association knocks on your door."

  The girls went still. The air in the basement suddenly felt very cold.

  "What do you mean?" Althea asked, her tone shifting from curious to protective. She stepped slightly in front of Maya. "Why would they knock?"

  "Because we were sloppy and you weren't thinking about the ramifications," I said bluntly. "Look, I don't know your city. I don't know your laws. But I know tactics. Even on that last stretch, I fired off enough energy in that tunnel to light up a sensor grid from orbit. You think a metropolitan area this size doesn't watch for abnormalities?"

  Maya grabbed the edge of the washing machine for support, her face draining of color. "They... they're going to arrest us? For illegal dungeoneering?"

  "No," I said, looking at the glowing list of equipment I had unlocked. "If they viewed you as a threat, they would have breached the windows by now. They're curious. They're going to come asking questions. And when they do, they're going to ask who killed the Aberrations that did manage to punch through before I collapsed the portal."

  I stepped closer to Maya. She smelled like strawberries and panic.

  "If they find out it was me," I said quietly, "things get complicated. My existence breaks categorization. If I show up on their radar as a Level 459 anomaly with no ID, I become a problem to be solved. And I am in no condition to fight off whatever 'Heavy Hitters' run this city or your world."

  I didn't know who the top dogs were here, but every world had them. The elite. If I met a Level 300 team on the level of the Starlight Blossoms right now, with 12% mana and recovering ribs, I’d be a smear on the pavement.

  I needed a buffer. I needed a smoke screen.

  "So," I said, pointing a finger at Maya's chest. "You killed it."

  Maya stared at me, her mouth hanging open. "What?"

  "You. Star Morganite. You unleashed a latent burst of high-density mana in a moment of desperate heroism. You collapsed the dungeon. I wasn't there. I'm just... your cousin. Reimi from Japan. I'm assuming you have a Japan here. Or Canada. A civilian refugee you chased after in the tunnels because some goblins breached the portals. Maybe I have a passive 'Storage' skill or something useless that explains why I'm weird, but I am not a combatant."

  "I can't lie to the Association!" Maya squeaked, waving her hands frantically. "They'll scan me! They'll know I'm Level 15! They'll see my output isn't high enough to vaporize a Chaos Beast!"

  "Not if you have this."

  I turned back to the screen and purchased the item I’d been eyeing.

  [ITEM: PRISMATIC MANA-CONDENSER (LENS MOD)]

  [EFFECT: ARTIFICIALLY AMPLIFIES OUTPUT DENSITY BY 300% FOR SHORT BURSTS. WARNING: MAY CAUSE WAND OVERHEAT.]

  [COST: 3,000 POINTS]

  The Sarcophagus spat out a small, faceted crystal the size of a walnut. It pulsed with a heavy, unstable pink light. I tossed it to Maya.

  "Meld that onto your scepter," I said. "It's a lens. It doesn't make you stronger, but it allows you to triple the amount of mana you can focus into your scepter. When they ask for a demonstration, you fire one shot. It'll look incredibly overjuiced. They'll buy the 'Prodigy' narrative because they want to buy it. Everyone loves a rising star."

  Maya caught the crystal, looking at it like it was a live grenade. "You... you spent three thousand points... on a lie?"

  "I spent it on an investment," I corrected. "You get the credit. You get the fame. You get the headaches. I get the basement."

  4,050 Points remaining.

  "Basement?" Maya whispered.

  I closed the menu. Four thousand points was a thin margin, but it was enough for emergency fuel or a quick escape if the ceiling caved in.

  The girls were silent. Linda was admiring her new glaive with a mix of guilt and awe, testing the balance. Valentina was looking at me with narrowed, calculating eyes, clearly trying to figure out what my angle was. Althea was just looking tired, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed.

  And Maya... Maya looked like she was about to hyperventilate.

  "W-W-W-Wait! You can't just drop that bombshell on me and walk away! I can't take credit for that! I'm just a Level 15, Class I, Tier 1! I've barely been doing this for two months! What am I supposed to do?!"

  I walked past her, heading for the stairs. "Get a better costume, maybe? Also, I think I'm going to get some more strawberry milk. I hope that's okay with you."

  The group of girls behind me all froze, then turned to Maya. She stood in front of the Sarcophagus, her hands clasped around the crystal, her eyes wide.

  "I... uh..."

  "I think you're going to need to spruce up," I called over my shoulder, heading for the kitchen. "You're going to get a lot more attention soon. You have to look the part."

  "H-Hold on! My parents are still coming home later! You can't just—" Maya's voice was a high-pitched squeal.

  "Reimi! Reimi wait! REIMI!"